Breeding Earthworms for small animals

[chwan]

Hi all, I decided to breed the earthworm and I wish I can provide small earthworm as food for the small newts or salamanders. But I don't know how can do that. So, anyone give me some advice or information ??? Thank You!

 

[jennifer]

Did you already read this:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/worms.shtml
In particular, read Part IV (last part).

Do you have specific questions not answered there?

 

[chwan]

Hi Jennifer, ^_^
What level of humidity of the soil is suit for breeding earthworms??? I found that if the soil is too wet, they will come out from the container and they tends to be dry out themselves. >_<

 

[jennifer]

The container should have very small drainage holes, so water can come out the bottom. The substrate should retain moisture well. If both these are true, then the moisture level will be right.

It is always a problem that worms will tend to crawl out when they are first introduced. And randomly at other times, a few will crawl out.

 

[peter]

Hi guys

i want to feed earthworms to my axolotls.

but, what's the best way to "clean" earthworms out?
by that i mean that want to feed my new earthworms so they cleanse themselves out from any potential parasites etc that they may already have.
i have obtained many large earthworms from my fathers compost/manure pile.
i'm sure that there must be things living in that compost/manure pile that i really don't want to pass onto my ax's.

i was thinking along the lines of; mulching fresh vegetable matter and placing the cleaned/washed earthworms into this vegie mulch, i intend to do this a couple of times before i feed them to my ax's.
is this over the top or does this sound reasonable?

peter

 

[jennifer]

I would worry that the "veggie mulch" would rot too much and you'll end up with a mess. I'd recommend making up a container of damp coconut fiber bedding (Bed-a-beast or similar) or peat moss and let them loose in that for a week. You could bury a few small pieces of banana peel or other veggie material as food. In essence, you'd put them into the kind of setup you'd use to culture compost worms.

 

[jesper]

The humidity level / setup preferred depends very much on which species you are trying to culture.
Most prefer moist material. The ones that don't reproduce slowly and are not very suitable for food cultures...The ones with permanent burrows should also be excluded.

The more moisture and nutrition(especially) the more often the worms will become ill (due to bacterial activity I suppose). The nutrition should be limited so it doesn't go bad - this is sometimes difficult to see without stirring the colony(which is not popular since many worms(like Eisenia hortensis) make semipermanent "burrows".

Pure manure has been used with very good results - ie very high humidity levels but rather low nutrition levels(Eisenia hortensis).