What do worm cocoons look like

Password recovery. Recover your password. About Contact Privacy Policy. Get help. Home Grown Fun. Home Gardening. The Quick and Easy Guide to Composting. Collect Worm Castings the Easy Way. How to Compost Acorns. All Camping Places to Go Rockhounding. Tourmaline Hunting. Only add food when you see them eating, and it's mostly gone, or all gone. Overfeeding is SO easy, and worms isn't many worms at all. Personally, I chop all my food real fine in the food processor, put in bags and freeze.

Freezing ensures any fruit fly eggs are killed, and takes care of my excess worm food, so I don't have to throw it out. It also ensures the worms have something to eat in times when they may not have much to eat that week. My primary purpose for having worms is to process my kitchen waste. If I am freezing all my waste, when will the worms catch up?

In the winter, we eat a lot of apples, pears, squash, cabbage, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, and parsnips - all of which produce peels. In the spring we will move to more greens, asparagus, strawberries So, how can I figure out what my "worm build out" should look like to really process all that waste into compost?

They eat their own weight in food everyday, double in population every months if comfortable, and there are about wigglers in a pound. You're looking at close to a year to get enough to handle 5 pounds of scraps per week.

Better start a compost pile to get rid of the excess for now and be patient. I think that is going to be my plan, pyropunk. I just found someone locally with worms to share. I will get a pound, and start a clean new bin for them. I will fish the old worm out of the old bin and add them to the new, then put the old bin outside to freeze hard for a few weeks, hopefully killing the mites.

I will just bury that stuff later. Thanks for the calculations, eric If I get a pound of worms, they should eat pounds of waste each week after they get settled in. I will start grinding the waste, too. If they reproduce in months, I can just start another bin, or help someone else get started. I had to look hard for local worms, so I bet I wouldn't have trouble Freecycling or craigslisting them. They will eat 3 to 5 pounds of food per week AFTER they get settled in, which can take 3 to 6 months.

You don't want to start giving away your worms too soon. Wait about 6 months, or maybe a year. Then your breeding stock will be large enough that you can give away about a pound per month without significantly thinning your herd.

Thank you, sbryce. I didn't realize the settling in would take so long. I will plan to trench compost most of my waste for a longer period of time. It really varies. Just don't feed your worms more than they are eating. As time goes on, the food will get eaten faster. I jump started my bin by tossing in some partially finished non-vermi compost. It still took a month to get things moving.

My worms preferred the compost to the kitchen scraps. Now, three months later, I can feed them fairly heavily. But there is still room for the worms to spread out. I don't expect the bin to be at its full capacity for at least another 3 months. I think your plan to trench compost is good. Feed your worms what they will eat, and trench compost the rest. I don't recommend doing that all the time as that just makes it break down too quick and heat up.

I do feed my worms quite a lot of food but don't take much time in preparing the food as when your bin is fully operational they just plow through the food quickly. Matriarachy: I don't think you need to start a new bin - I've had mite eggs before the brown ones , wiped them off with a paper towel and that was it for many weeks.

How many in your household? For me it is just me and hubby and our kitchen waste fills a half-gallon milk container we leave in the sink weekly. As I dump stuff in there, I have a kitchen scissors handy and I cut things up - banana peels, veggie peelings, tea bags - I used to grind everything up nice but I'm not that OCD compulsive anymore! There was a population explosion and I graduated to a rubbermaid container 18 gallon?

On top of our veggie waste yes and eggshells and once a week coffee grounds I shred all our paper towel tubes, weekly junk mail newspaper tabloids and paperboard that makes it to our door.

My bin has similar looking things in it,but when I mashed them with a knife they were gritty like little pieces of sand. Not eggs or cocoons, just little gritty stuff in that bin. Go figure. I thought I should post an update about my worm progress. There are still some white egg-looking things, but many seem to have dried up. I got a magnifying glass and looked at them for a while. A few of them started moving after a while, so I think they ARE mites of some kind.

I wiped most of them off the sides with a damp paper towel, and now there are fewer of them each time I wipe. We did get fruit flies, but not from the worm bin. I brought home a pineapple that was infested, and they just love my fruit-filled house.

A few of them found the worm bin, but it has not been the major problem. I changed our routine so that fruit gets processed into applesauce, or per butter, or jam etc as soon as it is brought home. Fruit for eating goes in the fridge. Dried fruit is in sealed mason jars. No more ripening fruit sitting around.

I also set out some cider-vinegar fruit fly traps, which are slowly helping. All my produce scraps now go outside in a bucket on the porch. I will bury them when the ground is workable. The worm bin itself seems healthy. The oldest bedding, food, and cardboard seems to be compost now. The new bedding I added is decomposing. From there, you can just hunt and pick them out one at a time. There are a few reasons I sometimes collect red wiggler cocoons. For one, Eisenia fetida is not one of the native species where I live.

Instead, tucked safely inside my worm bins, each of those cocoons promises me a stronger worm workforce. For two, I use cocoons to help balance the populations across my bin. If I have a bin running low on worms, I throw in some cocoons and expect many more mature worms in just a few months. Worm farmers of all ages enjoy the miracle of life and witnessing babies emerge and grow so quickly!

As I sat there picking delicate cocoons from my first sifted harvest of worm compost, I noticed one seem to shake. I laid it onto my open palm in the bright light of the sun and looked closer. I could see right through that thin shell to the blood coursing through the miniature worms inside!

And then, the littlest, pink, wet worm began to poke through the opening of that cocoon! It came most of the way out then changed its mind and went back into the safety of its egg-shaped womb.

Seeing one hatch almost was all I needed to want to know all about those wee little babies and how they came to be. I knew red wigglers were well known for their rapid reproduction, but what else could I find out about those cute cocoons and the thread-like babies inside? What I learned surprised me. A red wiggler makes its cocoons in a way I could have never imagined. It is made of the mucus secreted by the large clitellum gland, where some of the reproductive organs of mature red wigglers are located.

When hermaphroditic worms join to mate, they exchange sperm and begin to create this mucus ring around the clitellum. When they have finished, the mucus ring begins to dry and the worm scoots backward out of it.

As the worm slides through and out, seminal fluid, ovum, and amniotic fluid are drawn into the small capsule. It hardens and dries as it comes off the worms head, with only the tiniest hole on either end. Cool, right? A freshly deposited red wiggler cocoon may contain as many as 20 eggs. It is inside the cocoon where some of the eggs become fertilized and some do not.

Those that do begin to develop and live off of the nutrients in the surrounding amniotic fluid. But It takes a special set of circumstances to call forth the next generation of red wigglers from their cozy confines into the world. You can hardly count on Mother Nature to serve up hatching weather every day.

So, these surface dwelling worms have developed specialized survival techniques that are ultra amazing! For one, when conditions are less than ideal, the cocoon and all its contents can just sit put and wait. Second, is a trait that works to our benefit! Red wigglers are surface dwellers, which means in nature they and their cocoons are exposed to a wide variety of adverse conditions. So, to offset a low survival rate, these worms produce relatively more cocoons than almost any other worm.

Lastly, the unique design of the red wiggler compost worm cocoon and its reproductive material is shockingly adaptive. It can even be frozen and preserved through the winter to hatch safely when the weather warms in spring! As temperatures rise and moisture returns to the soil, life springs back into action.

But out in the wild, temperatures fluctuate far beyond this degree range sweet spot. In excessive heat, worm cocoons will perish. But as I said, in extreme cold, these cocoons and all that is within them, freeze, go dormant, but do not die. When the time is right, an average of three worms will emerge from every red wiggler cocoon. Compost worms are some of the greatest pets because of how little they require in terms of hands-on care. The same goes for their hatchlings.

Remember, if the babies hatch, its because basic environmental conditions are right for those babies to survive. Using a simple probe moisture meter and thermometer to measure these levels is the easiest way to be confident things are just right for nursery status.

Add a bit of soft food and nature will take care of the rest. If you need to, you can multiply your worm bins to allow for faster population growth. For every healthy worm bin, there will be countless cocoons being formed, filled, and hatched at any one time.

However, the production, rate of maturation, and survival of the cocoons very much correspond to population density, the age of the worms, temperature, moisture, and what food is available. On average, a mature red wiggler will produce 3 cocoons per week.

With an average of 3 babies coming from each of these, you can see how quickly the numbers add up. After only 12 weeks a newly emerged compost worm also becomes a reproductive member of its worm society. Try this handy compost worm calculator to see just how big your herd can get! For more exciting red wiggler discoveries, sign up for our newsletter. Every time I open the lid I realize hundreds.

I bought some fruit fly traps that seem to be helping. What could these be? Hi, Elaine Robin. The hose attachment on the vacuum is a great fruit fly weapon! Aside from that- if you can hold off on any more fruit or veggie feedings until they are all gone- you can start fresh. Your worms can eat moist cardboard or newspaper for a bit, right?

As for the sand looking something on the side of your bin- that could be mold, fungus, or possibly eggs of some sort- but not fruit fly eggs. Check out our article on Fruit Fly Invasion to learn more! Another way to avoid fruit flies is to freeze all the food material before you put it in the bin.

Easy way to do this is to collect your compost stuff in a bag in the freezer until you have a full bag, then put it in the bin. A product called Mosquito Bits small granules will safely get rid of them. It contains B. Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis which is often used by organic gardeners. I called the manufacturer to make sure it is safe in worm bins. I was told yes. I am sure they are multiplying all over the place.

I live in Southern New Mexico and I keep the worms in my garage. I bought a window air conditioner for summer and a floor heater for winter. I am maintaining about a degree air temperature for them.

I do not use anything but newspaper and food scraps. I have added sand and also corn meal every so often because my earlier readings said those were good for the digestive properties of the worms. I have innoculated a lot of my house plants with worm castings and possibly cocoons. The house plants are doing much better and I have vowed not to get any more containers, so as the population increases, I put them in the garden, in the yard and under my pecan trees.

Everything is going gang busters. I am having fun and my worms seem happy; Thanks again for all the information.!! Thanks, this pic of the cocoons are very much appreciated. I have seen these in my worm bins of the past. I never knew that actually drying out the bin would make that happen. Thanks a lot for the information. Also, the primary bedding I use is corrugated cardboard, with little newspaper. I read my post from , and I am amazed at how naive I was back then!

I live in NC, so the weather is temperate during the winter, and I accept that worms will die during the hot summers. When two worms find each other, mating happens, so by the time spring rolls around, I have too many worms. It is the perfect time of the year to divide the contents of the tub in half I usually move the top leaves away and just take worms and built-up castings from the bottom , and fertilize my plants.

My neighbor gives me his coffee grinds, and I throw whatever appropriate food scraps into the bins when I have them. They will eat many other things too, provided it is small enough to decompose quickly. For some reason, my worms HATE potatoes—go figure.

I bought some heavy-duty metal grating at Home Depot, and my neighbor cut it so each piece is a bit bigger than the top of the tubs on all edges. In the summer, I cover the metal grating with cheesecloth to keep flying insects out, and I ALWAYS place a brick on each of the four corners of the tubs to keep the rats out of them.

I have also learned that if I keep a compact fluorescent bulb burning all the time 40 watts is fine , the worms stay in their tubs. As long as they have enough loose bedding, packed bedding, and food everywhere they go, they will stay in their tubs. If you keep the tubs off the ground, they are less likely to escape this way. I keep a Zip-Lock plastic bag next to my sink at all times so I can just pop food scraps in it for the worms. There is soooo much to learn about worms, and I had to learn most of it on my own.

I sincerely hope that this info will help someone else. Love your detailed comment, but just a few questions from me. My last question is my most curious one. How in the world are your worms able to get at acorns? This is a first for me.

Please enlighten. I ordered my first batch of e. Their color was and still is a rather pale color, something akin to my own very pale skin color, with a distinct red stripe down their backs.

As I have gotten more educated about worms, I noticed that the worms my supplier said were hortensis are actually much lighter in color than redworms more on that later. They are certainly larger than redworms. I made some calls to people who had been kind to a beginner, and despite my description of the two kinds of worms, I was told that my ORIGINAL ones were actually fetidas, and they could be put together without any problems, since the people I spoke to said they were the same kind of worm.

During the hot summer in the southeast, ALL of the worms seemed to die off. My flowers are GORGEOUS and HUGE since I began putting both live worms and castings around the roots; even the area where I throw my black oil sunflower seeds for the birds has dozens of sunflowers sprouts now I had so many worms, I put them in that area, hoping to get some good potting soil, as well as giving the birds a treat to eat, something that broke my heart to do, but for the good of the whole colony, I had to do SOMETHING and reduce the tub populations.

Whatever the species the pale worms are, they seem to dominate my tubs and survive the harsh summers we have, provided I keep them well hydrated they are the Godzillas of my worm tubs.

I contacted the seller of these pale worms, and was told they were e. I contacted the supplier of the pale worms, and he informed me that they were indeed e. Wendy Y. My worms seem to like it a lot, and even though there is not much manure in there, they seem to like the dirt in the bottom of the tubs. I get horse manure from a fellow down the street whenever I have the energy to go get it. So much for my story on mixing two species of worms together.