Trying to get Euros to multiply

[doug]

Hi, I just posted this on the old board, sorry for the duplication, figured the response might be better here.

Hi Guys,

We've had some of Bob's Euros for a few months now, maybe 3 months... we had some heat problems but now it's normally about 80 degrees.

We have been leaving them alone pretty much, just feeding them every week or so, that's about it. Newspaper, cardboard, scraps are in the bin. And the bin is moist. However, we haven't seen any indications that the population is growing. We looked through a bunch of the paper for eggs the other day and couldn't find any eggs. Any ideas on how to get these guys to multiply faster?

We're using a green plastic tote bin, with holes in the sides, and a plexiglass cover. Been putting the scraps a few inches below the surface of the newspaper.

Any advice you guys want to throw at me, please fire away.

Thanks, Doug

[tt]

Hi I raise reds and Euros i keep them separate. They like it a little wetter and in fact if they can find a really soggy area they go there. I don't find them any different then the reds for capsule production. I use a newspaper bedding for them. but have used peatmoss and that is interesting as they will come to the top if you cover with wet newspaper so that they think it is dark. But the interesting thing is that if you top feed a bit of brown sugar or yeast they will come to the top and deposit the eggs. They grow slower but the babies are so cute and fatter then the reds.

If your going to use paper feed the corners and bury it under the paper, then look for eggs WORMS lay the eggs by a food source. With a smaller bin just feed the 4 corners alternating weeks. I only feed my small bins once a week. I always leave the middle open.

[Jay Blair]

Doug,
Have you considered a burlap covered swampcooler rack? A swamp coller woul not only provide a cooler ambiant surface temp to entice them to feed and breed, moisture drip would help sustain bedding moisture levels

The temperature factor is why I dont deal with night crawlers here anymore.

[Darryl]

Hi Doug....... Two main things first come to mind. The amount of worms that you have and the amount of food that you are feeding them. You never mentioned how many worms you stocked your bin with or how large your bin is. If you started with a small amount of worms and a huge bin, then it will take a long time to notice any eggs or increased numbers of worms. Do you still have your initial amount of worms that you started out with? You mentioned heat problems. Some of your initial worms may have died from the heat and if that happened then there may not be enough worms to notice any appreciable multiplication. With the proper amount of moisture, feed, and initial amount of worms, your worms should be multiplying fairly good.

I raise Euros, Reds, and PE's ..... Euros are the slowest to reproduce out of the three types. However, even though they don't reproduce as fast as reds or PE's, they still reproduce fairly quickly in a bin environment. Like tt pointed out, Euros seem to like bedding that is moister than the bedding used for reds or PE's. Worms will generally reproduce in proportion to the available food sources. If you are feeding them enough food, and provided that you have enough worms inside your bin, then they should be multiplying in significant proportions.

[JudyA]

I got my first 5 lbs of euros in July 2004. I know I did some things wrong and had two of three small bins get too hot, too sour, too many beetles, but after limping along for almost a year, this spring I emptied everything and started in peat moss, adding paper and more moisture. They have gone nuts. I now have three bins that are reproducing faster than they should, behaving like redworms in terms of feeding frenzies with top feeding and seem to have settled in. They are getting lots of paper and kitchen waste fed on the surface. But even when I was burying the food, the egg production was amazing. More than I ever saw with the redworms. I suspected the stork brought all those redworms with no eggs.

For the first six months, every time we moved the bins, and especially if my husband would just slide them across the floor, a few worms (3-4) would get mad and leave to their detriment.

To me this says the Euros are more sensitive than redworms. I think I read a post here or at worm digest where someone else had seen almost a year pass before things balanced out.

[Doug Breault]

Thanks for all the replies. I started out with 1 lb of Euros from Bob Ingram. I think that's about 300 worms or so? I changed the bin once about 3 weeks ago for the first time and maybe I lost track as I was picking through, but it seemed like a lot less than 300 had survived as I hand picked them into the new bin, maybe 100 or less?

So maybe there are 100 in there now (will count them for sure on the next bin refresh). And I'll try some of the things you folks suggested. The bin was pushing 90-100 degrees for a few weeks there. Maybe I did a lot of killing at that point. It's steady at 80 now, and I've been able to maintain that consistently, so my heating problems are gone. I'll start top feeding instead of burying the scraps, and maybe that brown sugar suggestion also.

How do you know if you've put too much food in the bin and have "poisoned" it? Is overfeeding a big problem?

Thanks for everyone's help, there's definitely a huge learning curve to doing this right,
Doug

PS. Oh yeah, I don't drain from the bottom of the bin. It's in my basement, and the last bin had holes in the bottom and it made a huge mess. I've got holes all around the sides of the bin, just not the bottom. Do you think this is a huge problem? It's a little soggy at the bottom but not bad. I'd *really* like to avoid a bottom drain if you folks think it's not preventing the worms from prospering.

[Doug Breault]

Oh yeah, the bin size is a standard tote bin... like 3 feet long by 1.5 feet wide or something like that. 19"L x 14"W x 16"H

Thanks,
Doug

[Darryl]

Doug, yep you have too much bin size for the small amount of worms that you have. You should have about 1 pound of worms for each square foot of bin area. In other words, if you had a bin that was one foot long and one foot wide, then you should start off with one pound of worms. If you had a bin that was 2 feet long and one foot wide, then your square surface area would then be 2 feet x 1 feet = 2 square feet........... This would mean that you would then need 2 pounds of worms to start with. Simply multiply the width of the bin by the length of the bin to get the square feet. When ever you have a large bin and a small amount of worms like you do, then it takes a very very long time for the worms to multiply. The more worms you have in a given area, then the more breeding takes place. However, you also can go overboard in the opposite direction and have too many worms in a bin. If you follow the pound per suare feet of surface area then you can't go wrong. So, you either need to put your worms in much smaller of a bin or you need to add lots more worms to your bin.

[Doug Breault]

Darryl, thanks a lot for the info, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for your help. -Doug