E. hortensis Culture Size

I have decided I want to culture my own earthworms and have been reading up about it online. One source I found refering specifically to hortensis was that you need to be really patient because it takes about 18 months for a starter culture size of 500 to reach a stable breeding population size before you start harvesting. This sounds like hooey to me but what are your experiences? What number of worms should I start with and how long before I can harvest from my culture? I have about 60 caudates I'm feeding if that should be factored in.
Thanks in advance for your replies!
Heather

E. hortensis is a slow growing worm, and it also doesn't produce as many vermipod eggs as some other species.

Was the 500 meaning 500 vermipods? or 500 baby worms? 500 adults?

It takes about 2-3 months for a worm to reach sexual maturity.
they produce about 1-2 young in a vermipod a week
it takes that about 2-4 months to hatch depending on temp/humidity.

So yes, you will need to wait quite a few months to get an established colony you can feed off of well.


I would suggest actually starting two "cultures" of them though.
One you plan to feed completely off, and one you plan on leaving to produce your stable colony.
I do this with most of my food cultures. Sometimes I even have a third, so that I can just cycle through them, leaving #1 to mature fully while I feed from #2, then move onto the next one leaving #2 to mature, and feeding from #3.
Somtimes just 2 cultures will allow this, but with slow growers, three is a better base for quantity feeding.

I got a 1 pound shipment of hortensis. It was maybe 350 worms or so. I started harvesting right away, and my population dwindled pretty quickly, within about a month and a half. I'm feeding less than a dozen adults.

Thank you for the responses! I may just continue to purchase and chop up nightcrawlers while the hortensis culture stabalizes. I don't recall if the source was referring to 500 vermipods or adult worms...