Author Topic: Husbandry of meal worms  (Read 1601 times)

Offline Bruce McKinlay

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Husbandry of meal worms
« on: February 18, 2009, 04:44:48 PM »
I found this advice about keeping meal worms.
Thought it might be of use to those who purchase meal worms in NZ.

Quote
Common mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) are popular food items for any animals that eat insects. They are an excellent source of protein. Lots of lizards, amphibians, turtles, hedgehogs, sugar gliders and even ferrets can eat mealworms. People also use them for fishing bait.

Mealworms are amazingly simple to keep.  You can keep them in a 10” x 18” x 6” plastic container with no lid.

They have a four part life cycle: egg, larva, pupa and adult (beetle). Not many animals eat the beetle because they are hard. The larva is the “worm” stage. The pupae are edible, but they do not move around a lot. Most insectivores (animals that eat bugs) like to see their dinner moving before they eat it.

Ful story here:

http://www.examiner.com/x-2178-Baltimore-Exotic-Animals-Examiner~y2009m2d14-Keeping-and-breeding-mealworms

Offline Leovb

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Re: Husbandry of meal worms
« Reply #1 on: February 25, 2009, 01:16:19 PM »
A very compact (and limited) manual but I guess for small quantities it will do. Just the remarks on temperature are to broad. Breed them between 24-29 degrees celcius and that will work well. Much colder and the cyclus takes very long, much warmer and the mealworms get "overheated".

In regard of feeding them I have the following experience. I fed mealworms to my Birds (Irevalidated wild birds and bred birds) every day and mostly ad lib (means as much as they wanted/needed). Mostly about 2-3 kg per week depending of th enumber of birds that neede them. Many species used only mealworms to raise their young. You can only do that when your mealworms have been given a proper diet.

Your meallarvae are just as good as you feed them. For your animals you want to feed them to they are no more than an attractive package of high quality food.
The diet has to consist of a proteinrich food (e.g. meal/powder form food for laying chickens) and they need to begiven a good amount of supplement calcium (I used a product that is used for dogs and cats which also included other minerals and some yeast, essential additions to another wise insufficient diet). I fmpney is no issue you can use Carnicon but still add some calciumpowder. I sprenkled the mealworms very generously with that powder once every week. On top of the mealworms crawling in their food I placed some small leaves of lettuce (dry!!!) or small chunks of apple evry day. Remove any leftovers. Tkae care for moisture otherwise your larvae will die from e.g. yeasts. You will quickly smell it when you keep the larvae to moist and they start dyiing. Do not keep them in the fridge unless you give them 48 hours feeding-time before you feed them to animals.
As mealworms by themselves have a phospor-calcium content thats not sufficient for birds or other animals when fed in large quantities be wary of the necessity to supplement a calium product to the larvae. If that is not supplied your young animals will develop limb-deformaties when fed meal-larvae in large quantities.

So, the manual is probably ok but before feeding the larvae feed them!

Offline Dave Houston

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Re: Husbandry of meal worms
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2009, 10:49:49 AM »
I've started a wiki page on mealworm husbandry at the address below;

http://wildlifemanagement.net.nz/wiki/doku.php?id=meal_worms

Please feel free to add your mealworm husbandry tips

 ;D ;D ;D