Dale Robinson asked 7 years ago
I’ve been getting a doubling time of about 12 days with the Indian blue worms. I know that this is a guess because to count or weigh them on a regular basis would be counterproductive. Some things I have noticed that is different from the standard worm bin is that a sampling of the worms/lb is about 8,000 worms when in full production.
I know that it is impractical to grow the worms this fast because I spent a lot of time building new bins one summer as my small start up of a few pounds grew to fill 27 4 X 8 bins to capacity in about 5 months with an estimated 1200 lbs of worms while producing about 20 tons of castings.
While I know my worm farm is not perfect, My question is; What is the possible doubling times of the Indian blue worm? Can I expect to do better?
wormadmin Staff answered 7 years ago
Hi Dale.
I’m very sorry I havent gotten back to you sooner – I didn’t even know several questions were still pending. Sorry.
As to breeding rates for species, its VERY dependant on the environmental conditions (heat/cold/humidity), feedstock and the operator and his skill.
The published figures for blues are:
19.5 cocoons per adult per week
90.7% hatching success rate
1.1 hatchlings per cocoon
Net reproduction of 19.4 young per adult per week
But it is totally possible you could do lots better than that – it’s just a guide from my “Big Book Of Answers E-book”
So your population MASS should increase slower – we say as a guide, double every 3 months, but again thats dependant on a lot of things and you could probably do better.
But after the hatching period of say 4 weeks, for every adult worm you have, you get 20 odd hatchlings for each week of production.
The mind boggles, doesnt it !
Thanks for posting your question – and again, sorry it took me so long to see it.
Regards
Brian