New housing

I'm changing all my drawers to the ones that are more shallow.  I bought a second set of three 12" drawers so I can have six drawers in just about the same space as my three deep ones.  This is partly since I'll be taking the "farm" with us in the motorhome when we leave for New England next week.

While I was moving the contents of the drawers, I noticed that the worms whose eggs I sifted on April 10 had lots of dust (frass) in it, so I decided to sift them and give them some new bedding.  This sifting didn't take as long as the first one, since the worms are more uniform in size, and not as many tiny ones went through the sieve.

I have seen quite a few moths flying in the house....the kind that get into bird seed, and I've found a few in my worm drawers.  I worry that they will lay their eggs in my worm bedding.   I doubt that they will do any real damage except make the bedding "webby", but I'm trying to find out which container of bird seed they're coming out of, so I can get rid of them.

My next project is to go through all my blog entries and sticky notes and make a chart of what I've done when to each drawer.

One more sift

It's been about three weeks since I sifted the beetles from their bedding, so I did it again yesterday.   I use the plastic inside piece from my salad spinner and it works well.

Today I bought another set of drawers.  These are 12" long but are the shallow ones just like my other deeper ones.  Since I'm needing more drawers and I don't think I need the extra depth, these will take up lots less space. 

We're getting ready to make a trip to New England, and my "farm" will go with us on another journey.  I need to figure out which drawers need to go with us.  This latest sifting can stay at home since it won't need any care for a few weeks.  The drawer of worms that I'm harvesting from has lots fewer worms in it now.  I've taken a lot of pupae from it and have fed lots of mealworms to my sparrows.  There may not be much left in it by next week.  I'll need to take the beetle drawer plus the worms in the next two sizes who are growing rapidly and need frequent feeding.

Sifting and sorting

I spent about two hours last night, sifting and sorting my first mealworm container.  There were two reasons: it had a LOT of "frass" in it, plus there was a really wide variety of sizes of worms in it.  When I got my first batch of beetles, I guess I waited too long to sift the eggs, and now that container has every thing from 1/4" worms that are the size of a hair, up to ones that are turning into pupae.  I really need to sort every two weeks or so to keep the worm size uniform.

I used my metal sifter to get the frass out, and only a few tiny worms went through.  I spread the worms and wheat bran (which was mostly eaten) into a plastic container and used tweezers to pick out the little worms, which I put into two containers: "small" and "tiny".  I have two drawers of smaller mealworms of two sizes.  I'm really surprised that the drawer I sifted on 5/21 has visible worms in it!

I need to make a chart of when I sift each drawer.  I have sticky notes on the drawers, and this blog is mainly for my reference, so I know what I did and when, but a chart would help.

I've also thought that I should buy another set of plastic drawers that are not so deep.  I don't really need the depth that I have, and having more drawers would be handy.

Grandchildren

I now have nine new beetles who are children of my first set of beetles.  I need to quit thinking of them as "children" so I won't have such a hard time using my very own worms as bird food!

My second sifting of eggs now has worms that are getting close to the size for bird food.  I've got to use my first set of worms a little faster, or I'll have them all turning into pupae.  Today, I had about 20 new pupae from them, and lots of worms are really getting fat.