How to Grow Extra Large Red Worms

Most home growers of red worms, also known as red wigglers or Eisenia fetida, use them to convert kitchen scraps into valuable garden compost. If you are, an avid fisherman or commercial grower of red wigglers for breeding, you have a different goal in mind---extra-large worms suitable for bait or resale. To create large, fat red wigglers you will need to provide your worms with optimal conditions for each of their five essentials: bedding, food, moisture, aeration and moderate temperatures.

Things You'll Need

  • Bedding, such as horse manure or peat moss
  • Food, such as corn mash or Purina Worm Chow
  • Moisture meter
  • Compost thermometer
  • Water source
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Instructions

    • 1

      Bed your worms in horse manure or peat moss, the best bedding according to Glenn Munroe in his "Manual of On-Farm Vermicomposting and Vermiculture." Alternatively, horse manure combined with shredded paper or cardboard may be used.

    • 2

      Fluff your bedding so it offers air gaps between its particles, ensuring that the worms receive adequate aeration and enough oxygen to breathe.

    • 3

      Feed your worms corn mash or Purina Worm Chow (available at farm feed stores) or rabbit manure for optimal size. They will also eat most non-dairy vegetable products, so you can also use free sources of food waste or composted manure from rabbits, cattle, horses, hogs, goats, sheep and hogs.Treat manures by pre-composting, washing, leaching (running water through it) or by adding highly absorbent bedding material.

    • 4

      Monitor the moisture in your worm beds with a moisture meter. Spritz or spray water if needed so the bed contents achieve 75-to-80 percent moisture. To achieve the largest worms, "vermiculture operations designed to produce live poultry feed or bait worms (where individual worm size matters) might want to keep moisture contents above 80 percent," writes Munroe.

    • 5

      Monitor the temperature of the worm bedding using a compost thermometer, available at nurseries and garden centers. Check that it ranges from 57-to-77 degrees.