How To Breed Mealworms! Mealworm Farming 101
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- Опубликовано: 15 июл 2024
- This is a step by step guide on how I breed my mealworms for all of my reptiles. Breeding mealworms is extremely easy and anyone is capable of doing it!
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❤❤ i love your videos please pin this you are the best keep making videos you are the best🎉
Thank you very much 😁
Starting a mealworm farm was soooo easy. Now i sell mealworms to my buddies with chickens. Originally it was just to have free food for my leopard geckos. Now it's a whole side hustle.
That’s what I love to hear! Yup it’s very easy and you can definitely make it a side hustle congrats on your success!
What's the going rate for live mealworms?
So easy that when I released a few in my lizards tank, they dug into the damn styrofoam I had on the bottom of his tank and have survived for months under the styrofoam layer eating nothing but moss and styrofoam I didn't even intend to start a colony, it was entirely inadvertent and I never realized that these little guys can consume just about anything! I wonder if their bodies can break down microplastics and clean up our mess... I'm starting to think that alternating the species into my crop soil every 3-4 years to purify the soil of unwanted micros is feasible!? I think I've discovered another use for the little buggers that might have a huge positive impact on the environment!
@@CriminalonCrimeit might be dangerous for your gecko to eat worms with styrofoam in them, just make sure it’s safe 😀👍
@@ChiefSweetsUniverseis it possible to spend no money on food for an leopard gecko if I breed multiple type of insects?
Thank you so much for teaching me how to make a mealworm farm! I feed them to my jumping spider Pumpkin!!🙏🧡
Happy to help
This time a month ago I never thought I'd find myself searching "breeding mealworms" yet here I am 😂 I bought mealworm online for my garden birds, the birds loved them so I bought some more, and some more and yup, some more! So I had the idea of breeding and ended up on your video. Wish me luck, I'm gonna give this a go 😳 not sure how I'm gonna deal with the beatles, cross that bridge if I ever get to it. Thanks for the amazing advice
Thank you for this clear video! I was overthinking on how to design a tub that can separate adults from babies but thanks for assuring us we don’t need to overthink! Glad to know they lay tons of eggs that will more than replace any worms the beetles cannibalize hehe
Thank you for a short, simple and non babaling video. This was great information and easy to understand
I’m glad you enjoyed thank you
Bro, thank you. Made my life a hell of a lot easier after watching this 😊
Happy to help!
I feed the robins and mocking birds in my back yard. They have their own bowl they can grab them out of. And if I'm outside, I keep a container of them so when they fly down and “ask” ( chirp at me or walk up to me ) for some I have some to throw on the patio for them to eat.
Thank you ! Helps more than you know when it comes to fathering reptiles on a budget
Happy to help
So basically once you see the mealworms in the "beetle bin" you transfer them to the mealworm container and vice versa with the pupae. Great info 😊
Yes and the pupae is really the only thing that you have to take care of. Cause the worms and the beetles will eat those
great video, thank you!! I am just now starting to get beetles in the last couple weeks but wasn't sure why I had so many dead pupae. I just moved all the pupae into my beetle box and am hopeful for more success going forward! My ducks thank you :)
Happy to help! Yes the worms will eat those pupae fast!
You are so encouraging buddy! Thanks man
You're awesome. Always appreciate your help.
Thank you happy to help
You are a beautiful man! I am up to my neck in work- too many animals, and feeling burned out. I got a shipment of Vermont meal worms ahead of schedule. Their arrival was another wrench in my cog. But I think I got this❤
Very helpful tutorial for my ants food. Thanks!
Happy to help
Another banger appreciate it bro!
Thank you glad you liked it
I'm so grateful for your videos! For a very long time I've been dreaming about keeping tarantulas, but I realise it will unlikely to happen due to the work required to keeping the live feed. I'll be checking your roaches video, though it would be the least appealing choice for me. These guides are super cool though, and I can see how easy it is. Maybe if I had many tarantulas it would be worth the effort of keeping live feed. Thank you for your work, I appreciate it!
Happy to help!
Dude. Thank you. Meal worm madness.
Happy to help
Celery is really good for the food too
Bro your the best :)
This is the most helpful video
thank you thank you thank you!!!!! your video was awesome!!!
Your welcome happy to help
Thanks dude! I have a dubia colony for my critters and wanna try mealworms again to have another consistent staple always on hand. The first time I didn't know I was supposed to separate them WOOPS! 😅 I'm an overthinker so you saved me a mental spiral or 10 🙏
Happy to help! Yeah definitely seperate the pupae and you will be golden
hahah it's like "do it and that's it, duh" and it really is like that. I'm excited.
Thanks for the advice
Happy to help
Great way to always have bait for fishing 👍
That too!
Very helpful video! Thank you!
Happy to help!
u too cute to be out here making maggot 💀
Straight to the point and relevant information! Nice video! 👍
I'll do a mealworms farm to feed my razorback turtle. Is it safe to feed my turtle with the beetles?
Thank you I appreciate it. You can but as a occasional treat.
Nice videos so far easy to understand ,
Thank you! I’m not a teacher but I think I’m getting better at teaching the more I make videos 😁
thanks lots brother ❤ I like your speak so much
Thank you
Thanks I started breeding meal worms and I keep them as pets there cool to look at
They are pretty neat
fun fact: using crested gecko powder witha. small amount of water ( with bugs inside ) can actually cause baby mealworms to hatch after 2 days!
Cool vid,what temperature to make the pupae at?
Thank you so much I just got my first bearded dragon named spike and he loves meal worms thankyou
Happy to help!
Thanks I need this for my praying mantis
Thank you for the video. Honestly i was overthinking it. I did seperste the pupaes from mealworm and adults. I accidently squished an egg trying to tranfer adults to bigger bin😂. They are all ruthless cannabals..some adult bettles were eaten. Im starting small. 15-30 adult bettles and puppaes each. Mixed two diffrent mealworms from diffrent areas. Im breeding for my future 200+ Jumping spider slings and 6 adult Jumpers atm.
Happy to help! No worries everyone overthinks it as well. Yeah you’ll definitely have enough food breeding the mealworms
oh these are my pets !!! 🥳📣🎂😉
😁
I got started on my own mealworm farm a month ago for my gecko and im gonna grow them to adult beetles.
Unfortunately i didnt have any oatmeal. So i came up with an idea to Crush a loaf of bread into coarse pieces as substrate.
You could also use top soil from Home Depot
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse yeah infact one time i used water on frass and all of a sudden. It turned into soil before my very eyes
Good thing to know comod oatmeal is good for something! 😂
My main issue is that the carrots still make thr oats mold even when i have really good ventilation. Im having to completely replace the oats every 4 to 6 weeks since part of them mold and the rest stale and get hard.
Use whole carrots. They don’t have the juicy outside. I only have to replace oats like once a year.
I've mixed vermiculite with my oats to help prevent excess moisture, lmk if this is a bad idea, also a small fan or breeze can help influence ventilation. It may be getting stagnant.
I use a small temp/humidity sensor that monitors this. Govee makes a decent one and can give you daily to monthly readings on the app
Sounds like you live in high humidity or need more ventilation to both.
Bro, I just recently found your channel. I’m about to get a leopard gecko. Your videos have been super helpful. Thank you.
Happy to help!
OMG you're the best!!! What if we just want to occasionally bring some home from Petsmart? Can you pls make a video on how to store and care for those? I was told to put them in the fridge again so they remain "dormant". Can you please make a video on this option? How/when would these be "gut-loaded"?
Will do that’s a great idea!
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse Thank you! I've been binge-watching all your videos. Best channel to learn how to care for bearded dragons. I just recently got a baby bearded dragon and want to give him the best life possible!
@@glorias.2930 happy to hear that glad I could help!
I accidentally had meal worms appear in my Dubia Roach enclosure. I think a beetle from the first bag I bought the first month of caring for my roaches, mated with another beetle from a second bag I had bought when we ran out of dubia roaches like a month later. I know its a long time, but they came from somewhere lol. Now I am taking my adult dubias out of the container, and moving them to a new setup away from the meal worms lol
Lol that’s crazy! Kind of lucky 😂
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse That's what I am saying! So now, watching more and more videos, I want to maybe getting into selling them locally so I can help sell cheap Meal worms to reptile owners or whatever eats them. I also just made some recent local connections, and I will be seeing them soon and talking about this with them.
you could probably make a sifter to filter the worms from the beetles too
Yes definitely could
I’m weird, I know, but I’m considering keeping some mealworms as pets, and so I’m planning to create a naturalistic environment for them. A few questions: (1) Do you think a dry sand substrate would work well for them (or maybe moist potting soil?) ... and have a separate feeding area/dish? (2) some people mention that smell is an issue. How often would you recommend cleaning to reduce smell? (3) How long do the adult beetles live, approx.? BONUS QUESTION: I’m thinking of starting with a very small population ... what do you think of the following names for my mealworms (baby pet beetles): George, Paul, John, and Ringo? 😃
That sounds awesome! I feel like my roach colonies are my pets at this point. Names are great. Beatles is a good band haha. Now smell only occurs from old substrate they don’t smell themselves really. You could use a special mix substrate I think sand alone wouldn’t be good. Peat mixed with play sand at 70/30 ratio would be good.
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse Great, thanks! I’ll try that. 😄
I want to ask if the oatmeal needs to be in the blender, or it's not so important, because when i put the blendered oatmeal there is something like dust and it sticks onto the worm's body and is this a problem like they can't breathe or something else.
Well that's one way to keep chaia and Keenu out of your room when we go over! 😂. They couldn't stay out of your room when you only had all the gaming computers set up!
😂😂😂 they might think it’s cool you never know!
I’m looking into getting a bearded dragon. But we also have some chickens. How fast do they lay eggs and how fast do the eggs hatch? Cause I’m worried I may get too many. I don’t know many people who need the meal worms for any other pets.
May I ask what is the material u used to mesh the middle drawer.. I keep looking for the exact thing at stores with mo luck.. I just want to make sure I have suitable holes.
Sorry my bad it’s aluminum screen you can find it at Home Depot or lowes for windows
😎
😁
I’ve got loads of pupae that I’ve transferred to another tub but they don’t get to the beetle stage they just go dark brown and black and die! But I gut load the worms before they turn to the pupae
The pupae turns brown and then black before the beetle emerges. That's normal.
Great video. I have had my mealworm farm for about a year and I’ve spent time cleaning what I believe was Pooh from my original mealworms. Using unprocessed bran as a medium I would sift the Pooh that the bran and worms would not fall through. You didn’t mention it as a requirement. Do I stop doing this. Now that my farm is established I’m worried it will be eggs that I sift out.
After I sift a bin, I keep the frass for a couple months. I sift it every couple weeks and have always found tiny worms. Just keep sifting until you don't have any more worms. I don't know if it is neccassary, but I leave a handfull of oats and a carrot or stalk of celery. You can sell the frass or use it in your garden as a fertilizer (NPk222) Don't forget to where a mask. Some people develop allergies from the dust.
Im scared of insects… and as soon as i saw that they evolve into beetles, i dont think its an option for me anymore 😂 theres a pupa thingy in my container from petco im getting rid of that immediately
I’m trying to start a mealworm farm for selling to chicken owners as it became legal in my area and for food! Fried mealworms taste like potato chips!
Don't forget to bake your outs at 175 for 20 minutes. Even store bought oats can have mites on them
How long do the mealworms last if they aren't refrigerated? Keeping them cool keeps them in their mealworm state so they last longer and don't pupate. Do you transfer them to a fridge at all or I guess you have enough reptiles to feed so you don't have to
They last pretty long in the mealworm state I’d say about a maybe two months. I don’t refrigerate any of mine
What’s the mesh screen size (tiny holes) that you used so the eggs can fall thru. Please and thank you.
Just basic window screen. Idk the size because I believe all window screen for houses are the same size.
Mealworm farming is insanely easy, i thought it will be a little hard😂
Oh no it’s superrr easy haha.
So how do you change the oat substrate when there are tons of mealworms in there? Do you just pick the bigger ones out of the bin and throw the rest away?
Now that is a great question and usually I have a sifter like screen mesh kitchen strainer and just pour it through that and it will catch most mealworms and all the oats usually go through the sifter
Hmmm sounds like heat is going to be a bigger challenge when we have winter half the year
Yes that is very true when they get cold they will not breed fast if at all and will slow growth tremendously
ughh beetles make me shiver 😭 they’re scary, idk why. I guess ima just have to deal with it, because I H8 ROACHES, I’ll never get them, and my gecko needs multiple types of insects. Thanks for this video :)
Happy to help!
Is using oat meal a must? I normally buy mealworms for my leopard gecko but I’m debating breeding them for a little side hustle. I’ve just been using a soil kinda thing for my current mealworms is that okay to use?
Oh yeah that’s ok as well. You can use many different substrates.
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse thank you. appreciate the helpful video
So one the baby mealworms hatch in the beetle box you just move them over to the mealworm box?
Yeah you can you can just also leave them if you want. The pupae is really the only things you want to move.
Hi, I have very small baby mealworms. I got all the beetles out of the container. What vegetables do you feed the babies with? I think carrots are too hard for them, they are very tiny
They eat the oatmeal. The carrots are just for hydration.
I'm having trouble with mites in my meal worm bins. Have you had any issues or ideas on how to get rid of them? I used oats as the base and baked it in the oven first to ensure it was mite free to start with but eventually the mites showed up.
I put a bead of vaseline about an inch from the inner top. I sprinkled organic green pea flour in the substrate. The green or yellow pea flour kills the newly hatched mites and the adults get stuck in the vaseline. Voila! No more mites
@@cathyhanley8658 thank you - I pretty much did exactly as you stated after researching the mites and it worked really well. They are all gone now!
They are so nasty. I'm glad you had success.@@shaunneal9981
But I didn't quit understand how to separate the eggs from the Beatles
Is humidity important ... If so how to keep humidity up and not have them die with 80 degree heat?
How long it take?
What's the timeline from worm to pupae to beetle to egg back to worm?
That’s a good question mine will take about two months.
The beetles can be fed as well? I've tried offering the beetles before and my reptiles weren't interested in them
Yeah they can but that is true most reptiles are like na don’t want it. My uromastyx like them though haha
So basically just protect the pupae. 👍
You got it! Protect them at all cost! 😂
can you use corn meal as a container bedding??
Yes 100% but I’m not a fan of it just cause it’s way more dusty
Can the beatles be fed to chickens or are the worms better for them?
Yeah they can the chickens might not like em as much but they do eat them
So I just entered the reptile world with our first beardie. If we only
Have the one would it be simple enough to just throw them in a box and never sift or move them? Even if the Beatles eat some I’m assuming we could get enough meal worms to feed one beardie?
Yeah you could totally do that. Sometimes I get lazy and just leave em. You wings get as much back but they will still reproduce
I had a really successful mealworm farm and my chickens loved them but then aouse got in and ate all the mealworms, pupae and beetles and now I am beginning again
That’s unlucky. Good luck on the new start
can you use rolled oats?
Yes, I have mealworms that I'm pupating now and they eat them fine.
Do I have to bake the oatmeal? I’ve been reading online..
No I never have never had a issue however some people do to make sure they don’t get grain mites
So do the beetles go to the bottom of the container to lay the eggs ?Im confused on where they lay them
Yes they lay them on the bottom
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse thanks
If u use a 3 layer plastic shelf,beetles on top cut rectangle and hot glue screen. Eggs fall to next bin with mealworms then hand pick larva ,place in bottom bin. New beetles are white then brown then turn black..place into top container.
the eggs vaporise, you breathe them in, and they hatch in your lungs
@@cvspvr good to know lol
I have started my mealworm farm back in November of 2023
Very nice!
I was told that oatmeal has micro mites that eat the bugs that come out of grains, and those will eat and kill the mealworms.. aren’t we supposed to heat the oatmeal in the toaster oven for a while to kill those mites and any bug eggs in the grain?
Grain mites are a thing but I’ve never ever had them
How long do the beetles live. I’d like to feed those to my green tree frogs before the beetles die get extra free food
They live a couple months but sometimes they do die quickly
Can you use wheat bran as bedding?
Oh yeah that works
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse Great content! Easy to understand and to the point 👍
Where do u buy the mealworms to start the colony?
Rainbow mealworms
Some say the beetles fly, some say they dont. Im unsure. Whats your experience with this?
I’ve never seen one fly at all.
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse Im probably just paranoid, but what species are your mealworms? I've read that ceartain species can rarely fly.
I've heard they have wings which are used as a mating ritual, if the enclosure gets too crowded and they can't get food they use the wings to jump and not fly. I may be wrong though!
No wings to fly it's impossible
Hey man just wondering if I should be concerned about inbreeding I just started a cricket colony and now want to start a mealworm colony
I haven’t really ran into that issue but you can get new breeders once a year
thx man @@ChiefSweetsUniverse 👍
this seems much easier to do than breeding other insects for feed.
I think so myself
Thanks alot,,,,,can I feed my chickens with mealworms???
Of course! Chickens love mealworms just make sure to breed a lot more than I did in this video haha. Might have to start with 3,000 mealworms cause chickens will eat a lot
How to deal with their poop? I can’t separate the babies and their poop.
What do you do with your beetles? Leave em? I want to feed my gecko the worms and perhaps the beetles can go to my chickens
Corn meal works too right? 🤔
yeah but im not a fan of it however it does work
Can they still lay eggs with nothing for carpeting? It’s just a plastic container
They will still lay the eggs but the worms and beetles will probably eat them if they don’t have substrate
I found using paper (of a sort) at the bottom of the container yield much more eggs. Replaced daily before the Beatles eat all the eggs. I can see where there was once eggs on the paper that got eaten. I estimate I got more eggs in 3 days than all the worms I started with.
Note: the eggs are very very fragile and can be damaged very easily
Put some mealworms in my leopard gecko tank 6 months to a year ago now i have ground beetles and more meal worms that the gecko's womt eat 🤣
Hahaha
So I've finally got the black bugs,but they keep dying??????and sometimes they don't fully change to bug before they die??????? Am I doing something wrong or it's normal???
Congrats on the black beetles! So what you need to do is make sure they have access to fresh carrots at all times. Sometimes if it’s too dry they will just die
Thank you 😊
I used to keep mealworms and super worms and I kept getting mites how do I prevent that from happening?
Mites only come in if too high moisture i think.
Late to the conversation but will the bearded dragons eat the beetles?
They will. They don’t like them as much tho
What’s the resale value of the worms
You can sell 250 for $10
bought 500 mealworms over a month ago..there are now only a few beatles and lots of black mealworms and black pupae?
can i save this bunch? are these all dead?
Yes the black pupae and mealworms means they died. The Beatles will breed tho so it’s good you have those. Did you seperate the pupae form everything else
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse yes, I separated pupa, worms and beetles aftr watching your video. How often do you put in new oatmeal?
@@101Cecilia I put in new oatmeal once it seems they have eaten all done to a powder. Maybe like once every 6 months but if you have a huge influx of mealworms maybe once every 3 months. That is peculiar that they died. Hmm maybe too hot. And you give fresh baby carrots every two days?
@@ChiefSweetsUniverse I prolly didn’t feed them enough, and my house does get a little warm. You’ve answered sooo many questions I had floating in my head
THANK YOU for taking the time to respond- AND SO QUICKLY!❤️
Potatos
Yes they love some potatoes
I just need enough for 1 regal jumping spider
With this you would have enough for 1,000 😂
What are the black bugs in there
Beetles. It’s what the mealworms evolve into