Farming Mealworms
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How many people have thought of breeding their own mealworms? I know lots of people tell me they have thought about it but what are the reason to do it? Farming mealworms can be a great side income as a small business. It can also be a great way to shave cost off an already existing business by cutting feed cost in chicken and fish farms. You can even do small scale mealworm breeding to cut back pet cost also. The reason mealworms are such a great choice is any type of bird, reptile, fish or small mammal will love to feed on mealworms with a few exceptions. Even people all around the world eat mealworms for their high nutrition.
One of the biggest reasons mealworms work very well as a business is the amount of products they produce for sale all from doing the same process of raising mealworms. The main item produced is of course the mealworms themselves. These can be sold for fishing bait, pet stores, different types of livestock farms also will use mealworms and you can sell them live or dehydrated. The dehydrated option is also good for times of low sale volume when you have extra product you can't do anything with. Dehydrate, vacuum seal and now you have another item to sell to your customers. You can also let the excess mealworms pupate, this is where they morph to go into the next phase of their life cycle. You can sell the pupa for starter kits. The pupa are softer without the hard shell meaning they are better for feeding at that point because they are easier to be digested. If they don't sell or get fed as pupa no problem they will morph into darkling beetles at the next phase. These beetles are still great to feed chickens or sell to other people wanting to get a jump start with their own mealworm colony.
The next product produced is one of my favorites and it is called frass. Frass is insect poop and is also very beneficial for gardens similar to composting worm castings. You can find it for sale in most hydroponic gardening stores and on eBay or Amazon. Frass is a great product to use for your own gardens or to sell to other people for their gardens. It is very easy and fast to screen frass when your separating your worms for sale or feeding because it is dry allowing it to be sifted quickly.
The best thing is mealworm farms are fast and easy to deal with and very low maintenance. I produce over 10,000 mealworms a week with just a little over an hour of maintenance time and that includes sifting and feedings. This 1 hour a week produces me mealworms, pupa, darkling beetles and frass that can be sold to fishermen, gardeners, pet owners and people that want to start farming their own mealworms. You can even buy your substrates in bulk and sell it off for a profit to other people that only need smaller amounts. That is several products produced all from the same mealworm farm so even if you wanted to farm mealworms for your chickens you can still sell off any extra to fishermen, starter kits to pet owners and frass to gardeners all at the same time feeding your chickens better quality feed stock at a cheap price.