This maybe annoying to accept, when you're a worm farm keeper, but the animals you intend to supply with your worms may just be the ones you need to shield your worms from. You built your worm farm essentially to rake in some profits. So simply sitting by doing nothing, letting those animals eat away your produce, just won't do. You want to keep coming with a sure and steady level of produce to sell to people and establishments needing those worms.
These animals, when fed and kept on the same farm as the worms in your worm farm, maybe affecting your worm produce in ways you hardly notice or would like to control. Various birds love to eat worms, so do foxes, snakes, toads, hedgehogs, slugs, leaches, beetles, and many parasites. So that's the first worry when protecting your worms.
Another worry here concerns what you feed your worms. These would be the manure you probably get from livestock farms. You use those manure to feed your worms. The problem lies in the fact that those livestock ingest some form of medication, which, if you don't know about, may negatively affect your worms. Those medications may not always be cleanly digested by livestock, and so the residue stacks up in the manure, which then goes to your worms.
Another problem with manure feeds include cluster flies and mites which prey on your worms. So you'd better be in the know about which livestock farms you can trust when getting manure as worm-feeds.
Related to this is when children have access to your worm farms. Not only may their inquisitive hands mishandle the worms, these children may also be affected by the left-over medication in the manure you feed your worms with. You'd best be putting up large signs to keep children away from your worm farm.
As for your worm bins, you need good drainage, so that the water gets replaced. Stale water tends to be contaminated over time, essentially harming your worms. You'd also need to be careful about drainage material you use. Some use shreds of cardboard, but some of these cardboards may have been contaminated by pesticides, which will in turn come into contact with your worms.
Another cost-affecting factor is which other predator consume the feeds you give to your worms. Worms tend to eat a lot, and if the feed supply allotted to them gets consumed by some other predator, then the worms may not be eating as much as they should, or as you expect them. They'd suffer and may be leave their designated worm beds. Even if the predator is not after the worms themselves, the effect is the same: you may suffer a reduction in your worm produce. One specific problem here is the presence of raccoons on your farm, because these critters tend to find their way into hidden containers and can open up latches.
For those who have birds on the same farm when you have your worms, there's no problem with these birds so long as you can find ways to keep them uninterested in your worms. So you might as well find ways to feed these birds in areas away from your worms, to prevent them from being curious and in the end finding your worms and eating them.
The last kind of predators neither consume worm feeds nor live on your farm. If your worm farm is found in or is located in a densely populated area, thieves and trespassers or nosy neighbors. So you will have to be sure your doors are not that easy to lock-pick, and that your fences discourage passers-by from simply jumping over them so they could snatch some wriggleys from your worm farm.
Believe it or not one of the most efficient ways of recycling your food waste is not through the help of large recycling machines but rather through the assistance of our small, long, and disgusting wrigglers. Yup, as always nature has provided us with a great solution to garbage problems that we created in the first place. Establishing a worm farm is great for the environment in so many ways.
The first benefit you’ll get from worm farming is composting. Compost what? Composting is a process where you convert food and other biodegradable wastes or materials into a soil like substance called compost. In worm farming, you allow the worms to eat the food wastes. And as that food goes in, so should they come out. The worm poops are called castings and that my friends are what you’re aiming at. You gather the castings from your farm and use that soil like substance as fertilizers for your plants.
Some enterprising individuals have marketed these worm castings since their effectiveness as fertilizers are quite known. It is said that flowers will bloom even before its season when worm castings have been used. Vegetable growers will tell you that the harvested vegetables are a lot crisper and even taste better all because of the fertilizer they used which came from the worm farmer across town.
And even the worms themselves are being sold in farms, pet shops, bait shops, and even online. You see worm farming can be scaled down small enough for ordinary people living in even a small house or apartment. That’s one of the beauties of worm farming. You don’t need a large area of space if you decide to start your own farm at home.
For a home scale level of worm farming all you will need is a container that preferably is around several inches deep. You have to place some moist paper, leaves or cardboards to form a layer before you put the worms in. Adding in some soil or compost on it may be a good thing as well. You then place your worms and food. Feeding the worms is rather easy. Basically any food scraps would do. However, avoid putting in meat, poultry, and citrus related fruits in the container. The meat will only generate this awful smell which is bad, especially if your worm farm is inside the house. Maggots from the meat can also appear which is kind of gross. Citrus fruits on the other hand are too acidic for the worms.
Feeding your worms your food waste and some other biodegradable is an effective way of managing your trash. You will have less garbage to worry about and you’re doing your part for the environment. The worms will give you in return a rich hefty serving of castings which you can use for your own plants. So if you’re going to have a worm farm, it would be better to start taking care of plants as well if you don’t have any now. The enriched soil will go to waste if you just throw it away.
The good thing of using the worm castings or vermicompost is that it does not destroy the soil unlike the chemical fertilizers available in the market today. Although the effects of chemical fertilizers are immediately noticeable, the effects on the soil in the long run are devastating. Vermicompost increases the quality of the soil.
Having a worm farm is quite an interesting project which helps you recycle food wastes into rich organic fertilizers. You can begin a home project which you can manage to become a large undertaking that can supply either live worms and/or vermicompost to a waiting market.
This website uses cookies that are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the privacy policy. By accepting this OR scrolling this page OR continuing to browse, you agree to our Privacy Policy