Preparing the container
The single modification you want to do is cut a large hole in the the middle of the lid for ventilation or turn it sideways to create a large gap or don ' t use a lid at all . The bedding will dry pretty fast so if you do not use a lid you might want to cover the bedding with a moist sheet of Hessian / Burlap or plastic , but leave about one inch margin for ventilation .
Bedding and food
Keeping worms for bait and keeping them for vermicompost is a bit different . Because here we are starting with a small number of worms , they will eat very little at the beginning , however they require more protein for cocoons production so feeding them their weigh in food scraps per week like one would do in a vermicomposting system would not be enough unless you supplement it with some dry food mix such as the Worm Chow , but I prefer not going this way because it is extra expense .
I wanted some material that I could add and kind of forget for few weeks . A natural one is horse manure if you have access to it and have the space to pile it up for a hot composting process of cycles over about two weeks .
If you don ' t have manure why not make some ? I ' m not talking about your own manure 😂 , but some homemade manure mix . The mix would need to not only contain the nutrients but it would also need to have gone past the heating stage in order to be safe to the worms . So to a mixing tub , add a one gallon bucket full of varied roughly chopped down food scraps , add two buckets of moist bedding material ( shredded cardboard ), add a handful of finished compost , vermicompost or aged grass clippings and add a handful of garden lime . Mix in and spray some water or add more bedding to get the correct moisture then cover with an inch of more dry bedding material . Leave it for two weeks and regularly fluff to aerate and adjust moisture by adding more water or dry bedding . When the homemade manure is ready , fill half the surface area of the breeding container with moist bedding material and fill the other half with the manure . Add the worms into the bedding side then wait for a week and check if the worms have moved into the manure , if so then mix the two halves , else wait a bit more . In my early experiments I started with 10 breeders per square foot , they gave me in average 10 cocoons each per month and because the worm density was low each breeder fatten quite a bit as you can see in the photo at the top right .
Next , keep an eye on the temperature and moisture . Every month , you might want to check if more manure / mix is needed . You should be able to tell because all will become
dark compost looking like a smooth carpet and cardboard , food , actual horse nuggets have disappeared .
In about three months time you might see some smaller worms in the bedding and a lot of cocoons . Now it is time to split the container into another one and add some more food mix to the two systems you now have . The extra space will make the worms grow larger and breed more .
After about 6 months ( from start ) if all went well you should have much more good size individuals . When you see that the food you add is consumed fast , you can start feeding the bins like a regular worm bin , no more manure / mix needed . Just deposit the food scraps on the half surface area once a week and alternate the sides , only adding more food when the previous feeding in that half has almost gone . At some point when the population will have increased and the worms will shrink . If you want more worms , you can split bins again or else just pick a handful of good size worms out and move them into another tray and allow them to fatten in a week or two .
There are other methods out there and if you want to skip the manure / mix step then start with 500 worms but 500 ENC breeders will cost you more . Also keep in mind that even for breeding worms for bait you still need to understand the basics of worm farming . Get this free guide if you ' re new .
To learn other methods , especially for commercial purposes , I recommend joining the Worm Farming Alliance where you will be able to get help from some the big players in the industry .
And if this is not really for you but you still need some nice worms for bait then head to page 14 and use one of the tools to help you find a local worm supplier .
10