I have been raising mealworms for around six months now. In this article I will show you how to raise the worms easily and without making all the mistakes I made.
To get started with mealworms, you will need to have a ten gallon fish tank, wheat bran, a empty cardboard egg carton, carrots, and mealworms. The fish tank I have is from Petco and you can buy a lid separately. The tanks sometimes go on sale for a really good price. It is worth waiting for those sales. The mealworms came from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm in a bag of one thousand. The wheat bran we bought was from Amazon but now I get it from Azure Standards.
First, dump the wheat bran in the tank until it is about one inch tall. Make sure it is all spread out. Next, set the egg carton in there. After that, get the carrots and put a piece in the four corners of the tank. You can put one or more, depending on how many you bought. Then, dump the mealworms in. Make sure you pick them all out of the bag. Mealworms do not bite, as far as I know. Next, put the lid on.
This is what my colony looks like in a ten gallon fish tank. My lighting is not the greatest:
After buying them, I recommend letting them go through one cycle. That is, letting the worms in the tank pupate, and then turn into beetles. This process takes several weeks, but is worth it. When the beetles lay their eggs, you will have to wait for them to hatch. After the mealworms hatch, you will have to wait for them to get big. Once they are big, you can feed them to your chickens. Make sure you leave some in there for breeding purposes. They will pupate, where they will look like a gross white bug. When they finish and turn into beetles, they will initially be white with a red head, and slowly turn brown, then black. Don't feed the beetles and the pupae to your chickens. Leave them alone so they can breed. I should mention that the beetles do NOT fly. They stay in the tank. I have tested them. They fall to the bran with a “thud” when I try to make them fly. So you can sleep well knowing that they won’t fly out and infest your house.
This is what you will probably see in one cycle:
The Larva, also known as The Mealworm, or, among chickens, Food:
Then you will see The Pupa, also known as Food among chickens:
Then you will see the young Darkling Beelte, which is white with a red head, and looks like Food to a chicken. I could not find one in my colony. They turn brown as they mature. Here is a very uncooperative brown Darkling Beetle:
And here is the mature Darkling Beelte. Agathae told me that it has a tasty crunchy shell when she ate one without permission:
And Abigail the Worm Eater:
To properly care for your worms, follow these instructions.
Put the tank in a area that is not in direct sunlight. I leave my tank at room temperature. They do fine here. It is quite warm now, and they seem to be doing fine. In the winter they will slow down due to the cold temperatures. I do not artificially increase or decrease the temperature unless I am too cold or too hot. The mealworms do not seem to care. So long as your colony is doing well, I would not bother adjusting temperatures.
Make sure they have a moisture source. I use organic carrots and apple cores (NOT the processor from a Mac). They work quite well. I have used potatoes and the tops of pumpkins in the past. You can remove the carrots when you think they are done, however, when there are freshly hatched mealworms, they usually all hang out on the old carrots in the tank. One time, I took the carrots out, made sure there were no worms, and put them on the floor in the “old carrot pile”. Turns out there were a bunch of tiny mealworms on the floor. I had to pick them up and put them back in. I leave the carrots in and they seem to do fine.
Mealworms with a carrot in the egg carton:
You will also need to replenish their wheat bran once in a while. I have not needed to for months. Adding more bran is as simple as getting the bag, dumping the needed amount in the tank, and spreading it out in there.
Some people separate the worms, pupa, beetles, and larvae. I find that unnecessary for a setup like this. It is a lot of effort. I have tried doing that. I would highly recommend leaving them all together and not worrying about how to sort them.
Mealworms hanging out under the egg carton I lifted up:
When I started, I had a old tank. It had no lid or anything. I sleep in a bunk bed. At the end of the bed, I had the tank close to the floor. I had a shirt at the end of my bed. That night, I kicked it right into the tank in my sleep. I woke up, and couldn’t find my shirt! So I looked down. There it was. And the mealworms were chowing down on it. I ended up getting them all off, but I had to get a lid. I highly discourage leaving your tank wide open.
I had seen this “three-drawer” method for raising worms online. I wanted to try it. So I ended up with some small drawers and ten thousand more worms. I dumped five thousand in one drawer and another five thousand in another. I decided it was not worth my time to cut up the drawers, and sort them. Soon, I had a overpopulation issue, along with mold. I ended up having to split them up, and then had to buy more tanks. I now have seven individual colonies of mealworms. Those drawers did not have sufficient ventilation, and the moisture had been trapped, causing mold. Thankfully, now that they have space, the mold problem is under control.
And moths. I have never baked the bran before putting it in the tank, but I have heard you should do that. I lived in a house with a moth problem, and the moths have gotten in the tank. Now all of my colonies have plenty of moths and caterpillars as well. Those can be eaten by chickens, but the moths and caterpillars can also destroy stuff. I would recommend NOT getting moths in your colony, even if the chickens will eat them. The moths do not seem to have any adverse effect other than having to share, which the mealworms do just fine.
And that is pretty much it for “how to raise mealworms”. If you have questions, ask me in the comments section.
I would also like to thank @Gallo del Cielo for the idea of using the tank and adding a thousand worms. This is the article that I followed when starting: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-raise-mealworms.48416/
Read that article as well. I recommend looking up multiple articles and seeing what works best for you.
I hope you have fun while raising your mealworms (and I hope your chickens enjoy them).
To get started with mealworms, you will need to have a ten gallon fish tank, wheat bran, a empty cardboard egg carton, carrots, and mealworms. The fish tank I have is from Petco and you can buy a lid separately. The tanks sometimes go on sale for a really good price. It is worth waiting for those sales. The mealworms came from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm in a bag of one thousand. The wheat bran we bought was from Amazon but now I get it from Azure Standards.
First, dump the wheat bran in the tank until it is about one inch tall. Make sure it is all spread out. Next, set the egg carton in there. After that, get the carrots and put a piece in the four corners of the tank. You can put one or more, depending on how many you bought. Then, dump the mealworms in. Make sure you pick them all out of the bag. Mealworms do not bite, as far as I know. Next, put the lid on.
This is what my colony looks like in a ten gallon fish tank. My lighting is not the greatest:
After buying them, I recommend letting them go through one cycle. That is, letting the worms in the tank pupate, and then turn into beetles. This process takes several weeks, but is worth it. When the beetles lay their eggs, you will have to wait for them to hatch. After the mealworms hatch, you will have to wait for them to get big. Once they are big, you can feed them to your chickens. Make sure you leave some in there for breeding purposes. They will pupate, where they will look like a gross white bug. When they finish and turn into beetles, they will initially be white with a red head, and slowly turn brown, then black. Don't feed the beetles and the pupae to your chickens. Leave them alone so they can breed. I should mention that the beetles do NOT fly. They stay in the tank. I have tested them. They fall to the bran with a “thud” when I try to make them fly. So you can sleep well knowing that they won’t fly out and infest your house.
This is what you will probably see in one cycle:
The Larva, also known as The Mealworm, or, among chickens, Food:
Then you will see The Pupa, also known as Food among chickens:
Then you will see the young Darkling Beelte, which is white with a red head, and looks like Food to a chicken. I could not find one in my colony. They turn brown as they mature. Here is a very uncooperative brown Darkling Beetle:
And here is the mature Darkling Beelte. Agathae told me that it has a tasty crunchy shell when she ate one without permission:
And Abigail the Worm Eater:
Taking Care of them
To properly care for your worms, follow these instructions.
Put the tank in a area that is not in direct sunlight. I leave my tank at room temperature. They do fine here. It is quite warm now, and they seem to be doing fine. In the winter they will slow down due to the cold temperatures. I do not artificially increase or decrease the temperature unless I am too cold or too hot. The mealworms do not seem to care. So long as your colony is doing well, I would not bother adjusting temperatures.
Make sure they have a moisture source. I use organic carrots and apple cores (NOT the processor from a Mac). They work quite well. I have used potatoes and the tops of pumpkins in the past. You can remove the carrots when you think they are done, however, when there are freshly hatched mealworms, they usually all hang out on the old carrots in the tank. One time, I took the carrots out, made sure there were no worms, and put them on the floor in the “old carrot pile”. Turns out there were a bunch of tiny mealworms on the floor. I had to pick them up and put them back in. I leave the carrots in and they seem to do fine.
Mealworms with a carrot in the egg carton:
You will also need to replenish their wheat bran once in a while. I have not needed to for months. Adding more bran is as simple as getting the bag, dumping the needed amount in the tank, and spreading it out in there.
Some people separate the worms, pupa, beetles, and larvae. I find that unnecessary for a setup like this. It is a lot of effort. I have tried doing that. I would highly recommend leaving them all together and not worrying about how to sort them.
Mealworms hanging out under the egg carton I lifted up:
What NOT to do
When I started, I had a old tank. It had no lid or anything. I sleep in a bunk bed. At the end of the bed, I had the tank close to the floor. I had a shirt at the end of my bed. That night, I kicked it right into the tank in my sleep. I woke up, and couldn’t find my shirt! So I looked down. There it was. And the mealworms were chowing down on it. I ended up getting them all off, but I had to get a lid. I highly discourage leaving your tank wide open.
I had seen this “three-drawer” method for raising worms online. I wanted to try it. So I ended up with some small drawers and ten thousand more worms. I dumped five thousand in one drawer and another five thousand in another. I decided it was not worth my time to cut up the drawers, and sort them. Soon, I had a overpopulation issue, along with mold. I ended up having to split them up, and then had to buy more tanks. I now have seven individual colonies of mealworms. Those drawers did not have sufficient ventilation, and the moisture had been trapped, causing mold. Thankfully, now that they have space, the mold problem is under control.
And moths. I have never baked the bran before putting it in the tank, but I have heard you should do that. I lived in a house with a moth problem, and the moths have gotten in the tank. Now all of my colonies have plenty of moths and caterpillars as well. Those can be eaten by chickens, but the moths and caterpillars can also destroy stuff. I would recommend NOT getting moths in your colony, even if the chickens will eat them. The moths do not seem to have any adverse effect other than having to share, which the mealworms do just fine.
And that is pretty much it for “how to raise mealworms”. If you have questions, ask me in the comments section.
I would also like to thank @Gallo del Cielo for the idea of using the tank and adding a thousand worms. This is the article that I followed when starting: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-raise-mealworms.48416/
Read that article as well. I recommend looking up multiple articles and seeing what works best for you.
I hope you have fun while raising your mealworms (and I hope your chickens enjoy them).
here’s another 
