Raising red worms.

I'm thinking about buying 1000 and setting up a bin in a plastic tote. Anybody ever raised any?

Thought about it myself and turning it into a business. Do plenty of research. Make friends with a few horse farms or someone with a few horses. Warms love it. Second best is cow manure. Chicken is to hot. Also stock up on cardboard and paper. Very easy to get turned into a full time job. The worm poo can be bagged and sold as well, organic gardners love it.

just make sure you either drill holes in that tote lid or do not put it on tight or the worms mutiny and you have them all over the place. the kids thought hey were helping by putting the lid on.

you want a tray under your tote , I found the concrete mixing tub sold at home depot under a rubber made tote worked well , drill drain holes in the tote bottom and vent holes in the lid

a pound of worms turns into 10 in about 6 months .

vegetable scraps and coffee grounds covered by a section of damp news paper to block the light and keep the humidity.

when your food scraps get the bin full to the top start dividing to more bins or giving , using or selling worms.

I have seen some stack-able worm bins think 1/4 inch hardware cloth and boxes as you get a layer full the next one on top is filled and they just keep working their way up into the new feed and abandon the lower level like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9lO7emUKk0

if you have a large space that doesn't freeze up like in a green house I have seen them done in even larger bins , same concept as the stacking bin but sideways each bin about the size of a pallet they were using pallets for dividers .

this is what the place I bought my pound of worms , the don't really measure just give you an ice cream bucket of compost and worms and guarantee they are dense enough you should have at least a pound in the bucket.

they kept them going like this and also had compost piles all over around their other green houses that also kept hot enough that the worms lived but should if freeze up very hard they had this store of worms in the green house with heat as backup.

most big active compost piles keep from freezing up in the winter , the small home piles generally freeze in cold places.


technically red worms are an invasive species , there are a few places they have not spread since arriving in balast soil that was off loaded but have likely been in the US for 300 years .

the chequamegon national forest is one of these places.

Interesting thread

What I have been told are red Wiggler's around here are almost impossible to put on a hook. Dang things spit juice all over ya when a hook is poked thru an are strong enough to break off when they fight the hook. Also they seem to kill off any other kind of worms in the same bucket with their slime. I'm a sod worm fan

agreed

I tried the worm business, but had no real teachers. I had big wooden boxes and in a rainy spell most of them crawled out and went into business on their own. That was about 60 yrs ago and today any earth worms around my place are very red and wiggly.

Then there was the ant farm for my 7th grade science project. Found an ant hill and robbed the eggs and put them in 1/2 gal jars made in WW2. Put them in under a table we kept the water bucket and wash pan on in part of the kitchen. I had given up them hatching and left the lids off. They hatched out and was all over the kitchen. Never heard my mom yell so loud, lol.

People do make a living at raising worms. 20 or so years ago there was a guy about 5 miles from here sold worms all over for several years. Don't know how much he made but did it quite a spell, so must have been making something.

A buddies dad raises them in an old chest freezer. Keeps the bedding covered with damp newspaper then a thin piece of plywood over that. Props the lid open for air to circulate. Keeps them fed. Usually 2 scoops with a 3 prong flower bed rake into a bucket and you have more than enough for a full day on the water.

Interesting.

Let me ask. I've got a place where there are almost no worms. It's good soil, along the river bottom. Just say a feller would like to get those red wigglers started, what would be the best way?

Was thinking I could till up a little spot, water it down good and "plant" maybe 10 dozen worms. Just get the soil loose so they could get underground and all. What could you do to help them out? What kind of food?

Years ago that spot was the family garden, nobody is using it now.

You might want to try a leaf mulch. When I was a kid (60 years ago) there was no composting. The City had a spot where they dumped the leaves that people put on the curb every Fall. We would get all the red worms you could ever use by just lifting up some of the leaves. There were gazillions of them.

Redsnow, I would think long and hard before helping propagate a non-native species. Maybe those worms you want to plant are in fact native, then by all means, full steam ahead. But do a little research on the effects of earthworms on their environment before you get to dumping. Just some (worm)food for thought.

Red wigglers, the Cadillac of worms!

Well, my daughter ordered a package deal of red wigglers, should be here tomorrow. I'm going to the river now and get us some rotten leaves and dirt. What else do we need? Or need to know?

I think she's getting about 20 dozen? I hope they're not cooked during shipping!

Heres a picture of how my buddies dad handles the top of the bedding in his chest freezer worn bed. I raised the lid higher than it normally sits to get the picture. Between the plywood and bedding I believe he puts damp newspaper.

Thanks for posting the picture. We got the worms yesterday, I guess they're doing ok? My daughter is messing with them, she's got them in a plastic tote. I'll guess it's about 20 gallon or so?

Found a place where we can get some horse manure, and have a friend that works at the restaurant across town, she's to start saving coffee grounds. Read where the worms will eat the filters and all, so it won't be much hassle.

Going to try to get another tote set up and ready, we'll wait a month or so and transfer some of the worms into it, and let them do their thing. Seems like our biggest problem now might be the hot weather? Sitting on the ground, pretty much and in the shade. We'll see what happens.

Angela Hawkins in Ohio raises them in her rabbit barns by the tens of thousands.

I did for awhile until they got a mite on them and died. Did watch a video of a guy that sold the worm juice to people to pour around their plant. Don't forget worm castings is a very good fertilizer.

I had a worm ranch once....but they stampeded and all ran off..dang near killed me.

Got a green smelly worm lives under the blown down leaves of soft maples that grow in creek and river bottoms around here. Best bait worm I've ever used. No they are not catalpa worms. Can get them in the spring and fall when it cools down. They go deep in hot weather. I believe I have caught every species of fish native to KS on them and some species that were stocked. If a guy wanted to gather and compost soft maple leaves, keep them cool like night crawlers, I think you could corner the worm market.

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.