Mealworm Setup

I want to start raising insects to feed our home chickens and the chickens where I work at Garden Dreams Urban Farm & Nursery.  Mealworms seemed like a good place to start.  Earthworms and Black Soldier Fly larvae are other munchables I am interested in but we will see how the mealworms go to start.  So far, I am totally hooked.  They are so interesting!  A bag of 2000 worms arrived from Amy at West Knoll Farm, filled with different life cycles of worms, pupae, and beetles.  There new home is a plastic bin with 3" of wheat bran in the bottom (I need to add more to reach 3" depth - have some in the freezer now to kill off any unwanted moth or mite eggs).  It takes several months or up to a year to produce enough worms from the amount I started with, but I did throw the chicks a few to whet their appetites.  There are very informative pages on raising mealworms on the web, including Amy's page  and the backyard chicken's threads.  I will post some some (less blurry) pictures when the worms get settled in their new housing.

Mealworm baggie shipped from Amy at West Knoll Farms.  The beetle is a darkling beetle, the adult form in the life cycle.

Mealworm setup: plastic bin, wheatbran, lil hiding place, vegetable item for moisture.