Hi, I have never seen anyone in a video use anything but veggies for hydration of the MW's. I have been raising meal worms for over 10 years in TX.. Trust me it's hot (especially this summer, 2022!) the heat is great for reproduction but veggies aren't enough water. For many years I have been cutting up cheap sponges in quarters, soak in water.. Put a small piece of plastic wrap or wax paper under the sponge (so no mold in the bran/oats) the worms & beetles swarm the sponges, love the extra water. Every week I soak for a minute or squirt a few drops of water on. Hope this helps with the extra water as it has me :)

I glued the screen on the outside of the drawer, so the beetles can't chew off the glue. So far I haven't had to fix anything since.

I have been farming mealworms for years, I have one container that they live in all of them they reproduce they do their own thing all I do is clean it out once or twice a year and I never buy mealworms. I guess it's an every mealworm for itself situation I find if you keep plenty of food in there such as grits or oatmeal and every now and then you toss and some fresh vegetables they will respond well and not eat each other..

Are you aware that the Sterilite drawers can be stacked? You can remove the top off one and fit another one on top. Saves room.

Thank you for your honesty with the mistakes and keeping it real it is much appreciated. I will be starting a farm soon as I plan to get quail in the spring. Thanks again.

I used glass aquarium. Food source was dry oatmeal. Water source was just slices of potato which they would bore into and even lay eggs into. Sliced side down on top of oatmeal. Used light colored worms ( freshly molted) for food for my leopard gecko. I did same with crickets but they required a screen lid on top of aquarium. I would go thru about once a month and remove dead ones. When oatmeal started getting to a lot of poop I'd set up new aquarium with fresh oatmeal. Id transfer live worms and other life stages into new aquarium. They I'd let old stuff sit to see if new eggs hatched for at least a month. I'd pull out any if found. I'd keep adding new slices of potato for their moisture source. I raised lots! Crickets would also get big sections of tree bark laid on top. Little crickets would hide in nooks and crannies of the bark or under the wood. I live in Pennsylvania so it was the only way I'd have live food for my lizard in winter. On the farm chopped corn we used for cattle feed would get them in it too.

I'm really enjoying following your journey this go-round. You learned so much last year!

City prepper sent my over after watching your shared interview. I watched two of your videos so far. Great content 👍🏻👍🏻

I raised meal worms in much smaller numbers at one point, I was feeding a single hedgehog, not a whole flock of birds. I am amazed at how the systems scale up. How frequently do your birds get a batch of worms out of this system?

Thanks for sharing. Was looking to start a Mealworm farm this year

On it. Thank you for the info.

Awesome info! Great video.

Hey!!! Y’all are amazing! Keep it going🍀🌲

If you worry about the heat, you could lay a small plastic on top with a small cut sponge with cold water on it. Plastic stops moisture in oats wheat

Thank you.

Some vegie is good but get some gel water crystals. Keep about a 1/2 cup of gel in the center of the bin. I used keep a lot of bearded dragons and went thru a lot of worms per week. The worms eat mostly the bran! I did mostly super worms back in the day! Happy bug farming ! 😁

How much oats or bran do you go through a month

The feed stores around here are not carrying any. Thanks and will be looking forward to the video.

Thanks, I wondered how people did this.

Nice video. Very informative.

Those green screens are made to be on top of each other, so you can sift through several screens at the same time..

They should be on Klaus menu twice a week.

Thanks

18:18 your fluffy T-Rex's love those mealworm , all gone in no time. A few random Ducks in there to.

In order to have a small mealworm operation going to supplement a small flock of chickens, do you need to end up with five sets of drawers going? Or can you do it with one or two sets of drawers?

I already know how, I worked at an insect farm. Good stuff.

Hey! Few questions. 1. How much time invested? Initial set up, daily maintenance, weekly, monthly? And how often do you do the sifting, how long does the process take? 2. What's the money investment? Initial costs, wheat bran, oats, and how often you need to purchase or replenish their substrate? 3. How much of the birds' diet has been supplemented with the worms thus far? How much do you intend/expect to supplement with worms in the future, as a percentage? 4. Do they not try to escape from the sides/top of those containers? If they get out, is it a risk of infestation in your house? Thanks so much!!

This was helpful for my indoor mealworm farm. Subd

This seams like a ton of work

How often do you add new vegetables. When the old ones are gone or when the old ones dehydrate? Thanks

Thank you for this information on Mealworms...... could you tell me where you bought the sifters?

where did you get your green sifters? I would like to get one

An easy way to get rid of the exoskeletons is to use a handheld blower. Outside of course 😅

I’m so sorry if this is random lol but what kind is your turkey?? I have one that looks like that but never knew which one he is. Thank you so much for sharing your experience!!

Have you ever resifted the frass and found baby mealworms, if so what did you do for that. I resently purchased a #50 screen sifter tray to see if that helps any.

I’m interested in the beetle project

Do you have much trouble with mice? Trying to get into the bran etc?

Where do you get the sifters?

Where did you get your sifters from? I'm starting my mealworm farm next week and this looks like the best way I've seen so far for cleaning and maintaining. Thanks!

Every time, I get grain mites. Every culture. And yeah, I freeze the oats before using.

Can you link the different size sifters and specify which you use for what?

Hi, thanks for these clarifications on growing MW. I have a little tip for you. If you want to cut out the bottom of those drawers, make sure you have a piece of metal/ruler or a angled piece is even handier, where you can let your grinder run along. It gives you a much straighter cut out and therefor easier to glue the mesh on. Save you a lot of time on repair too. Good luck and again, thanks

I tried the catch, kill, grow, or raise challenge for a year. Of course I spent 100k at Costco first on non perishables and hid them in trees around the property for later foraging 😂

How many chickens do you have and what portion of their feed comes from the worms? In other words how much money do you save on chicken feed?

Where did you buy the sifters?

What size of the mesh did you use for the beetle bin? Also what size is that sifter?

Are these for the chickens or are you making protein flour/powder for yourselves?

Where do you get your bran and oats? Can I see the bag

What trays were you using and where do I get them

Any issue just letting the meal worms go to beetle form and feeding the chickens beetles? Is there a nutrition difference between stages?

Hello! Where do you get your sifters from? Thanks for sharing!

I forgot to ask you can I use rice bran?

What sizes of screens do you use the most the green ones that fit in the bucket?

Wonder if this process could be enlarged to say ...bathtub SIZE in order to step up production?

Whered you get tge sifters?

Stack the sifters so you can do have to do it so much

You're gonna be busy 🙂

Need to scatter the mealworms out more so the non dominant birds get some LOL

What size mesh is each of your sifters and you progress down to the small stuff?

what size mesh is sifter?

You forgot to give the duck some!!

With your setup of 5 full storage tiers (without an incident of neglect or catastrophe) do you think once it's going well it would provide enough worms to give a handful or two a day as feed? I have about 20 quail and they go absolutely insane for them like your chickens do. But i can't afford to keep buying dried mealworms every month, especially since I refuse to buy the ones grown in china, so it's a lot more expensive for north American grown mealworms or BSF larvae. I'm trying to figure out how much space it will end up taking to grow enough to at least heavily supplement me so I don't need to buy so much.

Whats vegetable skat?

When you use the poop for your garden, do the worms turn into beetles? I have fruit trees and don't want the beetles to eat my trees or garden.

Where did you get the sifters?

What about grapes? Or fruit? Can they only get moisture from vegetables?

Hello .. is it better to have the worms warm.. or does that matter

Do they need heat, I want to start a farm but don’t want them in the house because of mites, want to place them in the garage and it gets cold here, so how can I keep them warm

Cheerio

I have two questions. 1. I saw you use three different mesh sifters. What are the mesh opening sizes of those three sifters you used? 2. Do you put the pupae in the top drawers with the beetles? Thank you 🙏🏻

What type of mesh? How big of holes in the mesh?

Where do you get your shifters from?

What is the optimal temperature for mealworms?

Just ordered 3000 meal worms to start farming. Having trouble finding oat bran at a good price in NE Missouri. Where would be a good place to look. I was thinking about Amazon but not sure how many pounds I will need to start. Also how much will 10,000 consume in a month on the average?

Do you keep your meal worms outside?

Nobody has shown the eggs. Can you video those please

1kg, how much for thats price?

Save time do all five sift at same time much quicker

mealworms drink i pit bottle cap water on top egg crate piece they crawl up to drink.

I’m More Confused than ever

My mealworms are climbing the plastic box what can I do pls

Where do I get the Beatles

Those white mealworms are not about to turn into pupae they are freshly shed

Melange

what is the output of the farm?

Could you please put the link where did you buy those set of screens?... thanks

meal worm pov be like O.o

Hmmm How to start go back and see another video 😑

I love this idea but I hate the way they move!!! They creep me out

Do they stink?

You can sell the worms to EU, they want to eat them.

This seems pretty complicated… lol

You NEED to use a mask and advise people to do so. Not recommending and using a mask is irresponsible considering the HUGE number of people who develop allergies to the frass.

So all this trouble just for a treat for the chicken's?

OK, appreciate all the effort you put into the mealworms and the videos to date but OMG what a waste of time materials and effort. Hope you made some money off KZfaq because this method of raising mealworms produces so little product to use as feed or even treats that it's just ridiculous and I'm sure you know that even though you're not saying it. Sorry, I'm not a hater, but many years ago I raised a lot of mealworms without this involved procedure and constant effort. I built a 4' by 8' by 2' deep plywood box with sloping hinged lid and attached 4 legs to put it at a good working level. I filled the box 3/4 full of bran flakes and added an initial batch of mealworms. Old vegetables suck for water source, If you have cactus or live where wild cactus grows it's the best, or plant cactus, even thornless if you like, easy to grow indoors and out and it will double production. I did nothing but leave them alone in the dark and occasionally scoop out a bunch of mealworms. Virtually no work or sorting efforts needed. The part about beetles eating eggs is mostly myth if they have enough food. Poop and garden compost is easily harvested off the bottom after scraping the other materials aside. So easy it makes raising mealworms somewhat sensible. Thanks for reminding me I think I'll do it again for my chickens.

Racist, you don’t give the ducks or turkeys any worms 😤

@Lovin Off The Land if you put a wet towel in there (top of a soap dish, so It didnt get the food wet) would the beetles be able to "drink" the water from the towel, like crickets?

Are they smelly?