First off, I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome the new readers who have joined the blog this past week and offer my sincere apologies to those of you who didn’t realize that this was (ostensibly) a humorous blog and that any “advice” contained herein should be taken with a grain of salt or, better yet, ignored completely.
I am, sadly, talking about my suggestion last week that one would do well to convert an unused closet into a compost pile to take care of all those slimy food scraps. The mistake I made was to couple this idea with several others which were, in fact, perfectly valid. This gave my bogus suggestion an air of credibility when in fact your response was supposed to be: “Ha, ha, ha. How stupid does he think we are?”
Well, I’m sorry; and especially so to Ms. (I’m assuming) LornaDorna1008 of Cedar Rapids whose Pomeranian was badly treated by the rats which moved into the closet.
Nevertheless, I will endeavor to add some humor (eventually) to the blog and make it more obvious when I do so. But please, if you are new here, go back to the very beginning and read the caveats I posted regarding the near total absence of truth to be found on these pages, and how where the truth is included it will be so improbable that the only response you can have is: “Ha, ha, ha. How stupid does he think we are?”
Which brings us to the worm ranch.
As reported a number of months ago, in an effort to bring healthy, organically-grown, good-tasting bugs to the free-range chickens we set off on a project to raise our own. The endeavor was inspired by a visit to Bay Hay and Feed, our local feed store and perhaps my favorite retailer anywhere even though I can’t afford to buy anything there, where we discovered that mealworms, posing as chicken treats, cost eighteen bucks a pop for a bag of dried bugs of uncertain provenance. Seeing an opportunity to 1) save some money and 2) take advantage of the local spoiled-chicken community; I rushed on over to PetCo and bought a little plastic container with 100 mealworms in it.
Back at the micro-farm, I deposited said mealworms into a used Tupperware tub, tossed in some wheat bran and a potato, and then sat back and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Until long past the point at which all the scientific advice indicated that our mealworms should have metamorphosed into their pupal stage and thence into adulthood as the darkling beetle.
Ours were still worms.
And then, Poof! Suddenly we had beetles. I don’t quite know what happened but seemingly overnight the tub was packed with a full complement of adult beetles all running around doing the nasty with each other (and the potato) in preparation for the next generation. “Cool,” I said, and then sat back and waited.
And waited.
Etc.
Which brings us to about a week ago; a point in time by which the beetles should have already been in the grave for a couple of months. But, no, they’re still active and, apparently, happy given the rate at which they’re still going at it. They show no signs of letting up which makes me wonder exactly what I’ve gotten myself into.
Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve run into the wall of scalability. Here’s the deal. Once the beetles have hatched you’re supposed to give them a few weeks to procreate and then move them into a retirement tub to live out their short, bran-fed lives snuggled up with the potato. This I did. But they didn’t die. Meanwhile, the eggs hatched and the initial tub-o-love was filled with tiny, little, baby worms in sufficient numbers that the bedding cum food-source was undulating like the surface of a lake as the micro-mealworms munched their bran and devoured half a potato a day. They were growing nicely. Meanwhile, back in the retirement tub things had not abated a whit. The beetles were still engaging in activities that would embarrass Hugh Hefner, and the eggs previously laid in that tub had hatched and were eating everything in sight.
Then there was a break in the action.
As much as it seemed otherwise, the worms do take some time to grow and each time they molt they shed their exoskeleton. Pretty soon the top layer of their habitation was covered with chitinous drifts of cast off carapace and the bottom layer was an inch-thick stratum of poop.
It seems I was wrong.
No, not about the economic viability of raising mealworms; not about the joy that fresh, pampered mealworms bring to chickens as a snack; and not, in fact, about any of the assumptions I labored under regarding the creation of a tub full of Tenebrio molitor. My big mistake was that I listened to somebody else’s advice.
Before I jumped in feet first, I spent some time looking into the practical matters of mealworm wrangling. My earlier blog detailed some of these findings, but the one that stands out in the “OhmyGodwhatwasIthinking” category was the widely broadcast “fact” that “from each 20 beetles you should get about 350 mealworms”. We got 100 mealworms which, in a perfect world, would have meant fifty each male and female which would have meant (make an assumption for mortality, etc.; this, this, carry the two) that we would have ended up with roughly 1,500 mealworms forming the breeding stock of the ongoing Tenebrioranch.
Well…Bullshit. Apparently none of that advice was correct and none of my assumptions had anything at all to do with the reality of mealworm reproduction. Apparently, they don’t die and they just keep making babies.
Now that the worms are at harvestable size, I have been removing about a cup a day and tossing them to the chickens. According to the response, mealworms have the rough effect of crack on the hens and the four or five hundred that fit in a cup, are completely consumed by the chickens in a matter of seconds. It’s like Shark Week with feathers. This has been going on for ten days now and I’m not halfway through the first tub.
Which is where we run into the issue of scalability.
Clearly, to have a successful mealworm ranch we need more tubs. But to have more tubs, we need more space. The micro-farm, other than the plumbing-supply greenhouse, has no outbuildings. No barns. No sheds. No teepees. What we do have is a couple of multi-purpose spaces that have to make do. One, which we call “the shed” is really a storage closet repurposed as a workshop, garden tool room, and seed starting facility. There is no room left there so for the initial mealworm rancho we used the other; a space formerly called “the upstairs bathroom.” The worms did quite well here because it was warmed by the afternoon sun and the door could be closed allowing plausible deniability to the fact that there were a hundred, six-legged, insects actively engaged in the facts of life just down the hall. Then came the apple harvest and that space had to be re-repurposed as the cidery – and subsequently winery. And then taken all apart when the guests arrived.
Operating under the assumption that guests and bugs tend to make for strange bedfellows. The tubs, vats, and accoutrements of all this nonsense had to be snuck out and discreetly hidden in “the office” where I now sit; a space so already filled with the detritus of modern life that you could easily put an elephant in here and still not find anything to talk about.
After the guests left, the brewery gear moved back into the bathroom but, because of some additional carboys, there was no space for the bugs. And, since the bugs were already installed precariously balanced upon a rolling and sliding file cabinet, there is no room anywhere for the additional three or four tubs needed to reach the initial level of scalability required for the actual micro-ranch experience of raising mealworms.
So much for the advice the idiots on the internet were handing out.
Which is why I hope you will take my advice regarding things you read in this blog, and not take my advice. Which all sounds very Zen.
So now I’ve just finished checking on the mealworms. The potato I tossed in the first tub yesterday evening is gone. In the second tub, a hundred scurrying bugs are still up to no good as they run around among the next crop of mealworms which are already large enough to start feeding to the chickens.
It shows no sign of slowing down and I think we’re at the point where we’re down to one of two choices: 1) shut the whole operation down or 2) build a barn.
I think I might need to ask for some more advice.