In Your Book "How to start a profitable worm business..." What Did You Mean By...

by Kelly
(SoCal)

A breeder bin for compost worms

A breeder bin for compost worms

Hi Stephan,
I bought your book. Absolutely love it! I've read it 3 times and carry it with me in my purse when I have to wait. ;0). You talked about starting with 10 Breeder Bins (page 8-9). It says, each should be 3 meters squared. In the back it says that the conversion is 9+ square feet. That is quite a large space for only 500-1000 worms. 4.5 feet wide and 4.5 feet long is huge. They'd never find each other to mate. Or is that the size to start?

Next Question:

I bought the Worm Farm 360. It's about 1 foot X 1 foot and about 4-5 inches deep. Although the product is doing a great job and the worms are growing and eating very nicely, I now wonder if worm breeding should be done in larger containers? It has a 5 tier growth with being able to have compost. Okay so here is the question. At what point do I move them to larger containers? I have a bed run so a good mixture of all sizes. But I don't want to stunt the growth because they are in too small of a container as well. What are your thoughts?

Unfortunately I bought your book after I bought the farm (ahahhaha! Get it? Ehem). And bought the worms prior to buying your book. Otherwise I would have bought all adult worms to begin the breeding process now rather than 3 months.


Thanks Stephen!
Kelly

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Dec 05, 2016
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Re: Breeder bin sizes for worms...
by: Stephan

Hello Kelly,

thank you for the compliments about my book :-) ! It's always nice fo get some positive feedback. The way you are communicating about your worm business venture I have no doubts that you will make it a resounding success story.

Let me get right to your questions.

1. The sizes of breeder bins for worms?

Worms can breed in large worm beds quite regularly but the advantage of breeder bins is the fact that they are kept quite compact and small to enable the mature worms to meet possible mates on a daily basis which will lead to a much higher reproduction rate than would be the case in large bulk beds.

The space requirements for a modest worm farming business given on pages 8-9 in my book are referring to the maximum size needed for all the bins, admin- and working space for a worm business that can support a population of 60000 to 70000 worms. The 3 meter square that I mentioned in this table are referring to the total of 10 breeder bins. If you add the list of
1 bulk bed 5 m2
10 breeder bins (stacked) 3 m2
Composting area 4 m2
Worm food storage 2 m2
as well as the working tables, equipment, products, bottles, packaging area, packaging materials and office space as mentioned on page 8 of my book they will add up to 30.5m meters square as the total space needed for this size of worm business operation.

For further clarification on the sizes please read the chapter on breeding bins in the book (pages 38 - 40). As I mentioned there,,breeding bins can come in many different sizes but our prefered size are stackable bins with the size of 49cm/ 19.48 inches length by 35cm/ 13.77 inches width and 20cm / 7.87 inches height.

Question 2.
At what point do I move worms to larger containers / bulk beds?

Once your breeding bins are stocked with mature worms let them breed for 21 to 25 days and than harvest the infant worms and unhatched cocoons to move to your bulk bed. For more information on that subject read the chapter "Multiplying your worm herd" on the pages 26-28 of the book.

Your worm farm 360 that you purchased will do quite fine as a breeding bin, but you can quite easily set up cheaper breeding bins at home if you want to speed up your worm production.

Dear Kelly I trust this information will help you. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact me. At the moment I am busy with the second edition of my book as well as my next book which I hope to publish within the next 6 month.

Kind regards and may God bless you!

Stephan Kloppert
Author of "How to start a profitable worm business on a shoestring budget"

Editor of www.worm-compostsing-help.com

PS: Dear Kelly, I would be grateful if you could write a short positive review of my book at the amazon sales page as this would help me to promote my book!

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