What does this worm smell like,Danny? Is it a caterpillar?

no its a worm. lives in the ground. no legs. smells awful. after a day of fishing you can smell it on your fingers for several days. maybe somebody knows the real name. around here we just call them green worms. When you hold one in your open palm they coil up.

Thanks, Danny.

I raised them for awhile in a tote similar to what you're describing. My biggest problem was getting enough food for em, once they got going.

I only fed them on one side of the bin. Let them have the other side for whatever they do. That way when you want to clean castings, you only have to do one side- start putting the food on the other side, and the majority will end up over there. They don't live living in the castings.

They love watermelon and cantelope rinds.

Don't start feeding them too hard at first. It's a balancing act. Too much food and it will rot and your bin will go south.

If I left the lid on, it got condensation and then the worms will crawl up and out. No lid, the top is dry and they stay down. You'll figure it out as you go. It's an interesting hobby.

Danny, those worms are probably Amynthas hupeiensis. When I was a kid, I called them dung worms. Other people call them green stink worms, green riverworms or Oriental earthworms. They were brought over from Asia. They leave large castings on top of the ground in wet weather. They feel real hard between your fingers and coil up pretty tight.

Keith

you ever fish with them Keith?

I'm glad to see this thread up on top again. Wish they'd have the date stamped on the threads instead of the # thing.

I think it was back in July when my daughter got our red wigglers. So far we've got them in 2 totes. Seems there are lots of little tiny worms, about the thickness of a pencil mark and maybe 3/8's of an inch long. They're multiplying.

Stopped at a friends a while back and got some horse crap, I just stopped inside the gate and shoveled up 2, 5-gallon buckets full. It was fairly fresh, dry and crusty on the outside, moist on the inside. It dried for another week or so in the tote, before she added worms. We've added some bad tomatoes and cucumbers, newspaper, tossed in a bouquet of wild flowers a while back too. I guess they're doing ok. The tote isn't over-flowing with worms yet.

Someone posted here on the forum a while back, that 1 pound of red wigglers would multiply to 10 pounds in 6 months. I don't think our worms are doing that good.

When I was a kid, digging worms, my maternal grandfather told me not to keep them because they stink. I think I learned the name dung worms from him or my paternal grandfather. I would of been around 4 when I first caught some. I used them a few times later on in my teens. I never found very many in my parent's neighborhood to use. They were more common in the sandy soil where my grandparents lived. They would coil up tightly when put on a hook and then twist wildly. They worked okay. I remember that their bodies felt hard, compared to a normal worm, between my fingers. They would crap on us sometimes too.

I had them in my yard at my last house in Dayton. I had put sand in some dirt floored pigeon lofts. When it got a lot of manure in the sand, I used it in my gardens and had a lot of the green stink worms show up. I have only seen a very few here, near Mechanicburg, Ohio.

Keith

might not be the same worm. live under soft maple leaves. not sandy dirt either. find them here along river and creek banks. where spring floods pile up the maple leaves. never seen them in chicken litter anyways. only creek and river bottoms with lots of the soft maples we have here.

We cut a few 55 Gallon barrels into half long ways and made a stand for them to sit on. We started with some left over fishing worms labeled “giant redworms”. Turned out to be European night crawlers. Ordered 1000 red wigglers from 2 different sources. They are the true composting worms and pretty much no odor. We drilled a few holes n the bottom for excess water, though we occasionally will have to water them. Here’s a link I found interesting.

Thanks, Chris TN.

I need to get a worm farm started.
I got burned at the local bait shop. I bought a cup of red wigglers. The guy normally opens the cup to make sure that they are wiggling. This time he did not. I opened the cup and had a hard time finding any worms at all. I dumped the cup in the plastic bag that he gave me, and counted 14 of the tiniest worms you ever saw.
I asked him what was up with this. He brought out another cup. Same deal. I said that I know that he buys from a supplier, but asked him how many worms are supposed to be in a cup.
He told me the cup says 25 grams.
I told him that I was going fishing, not dealing heroine.