Worm Farming: Feeding The Worms
It is actually fairly easy to take care of your worms when it comes to feeding but proper feeding is important to growing healthy worms and the health of your worm farm overall. Therefore you should follow the simple guidelines below.
Worms should be fed food and non food items that can be broken down and composted. Examples of good food for your worms are vegetables, fruits, bread, tea bags, cereal, coffee filters, egg shells and coffee grounds. Worms will eat all kinds of things so it is important to know which type of food is the best.
For example vegetables and fruits are a good choice and are digested easily by worms. Even so, it is important to serve them in the proper size. Vegetables and fruits should be cut into sizes one half inch in size or even smaller. The smaller the size, the faster the worms will eat it. You could even puree the food in a blender with water for the fastest composting.
In addition, vegetables and fruits are very nutritious so the compost the worms create will be quite beneficial for crops, flower beds and gardens. Worms also like to eat non food items like cotton material, leaves, hair clippings and paper products. They like cardboard too like from pizza boxes but you should soak them first in water to soften them up.
If you do feed leaves to your worms, make sure the leaves have not been treated with chemicals. For that reason, you would not want to feed your worms grass clippings since they have likely been treated chemically.
You can also add cat and dog droppings to your worm feed. Just make sure you do not use their droppings if they have recently been dewormed as this medicine will be in their droppings and might poison the worms in your worm farm. Also, it is not a good idea to use cat droppings that were collected from a cat box unless an organic natural cat litter was used. You should avoid all types of foods which have been tainted with chemicals or medications.
It is not a good idea to add meat to your worm food. Your worms like meat but so do other pesky critters such as flies and maggots. You can control maggot infestations by avoiding meat all together. For this reason you should also avoid dairy products. You should also not use foods that have a powerful odor such as garlic, onions and citrus fruit. Your worms may try to escape their bin to get away from the strong odors.
Feeding worms will be a pretty easy job. Just remember not to give them anything that is not natural or that has chemicals or medications on it. Also be sure to control the portions and not over feed. Feed new worms small amounts until they become established, then increase the amount you feed them over time.
Over feeding can attract pests and can lead to foul smells. Only offer new food when the old food is almost gone. Worms can eat a lot. They eat more than half of their body weight each day and your worm population will double within a few months. Don't overcompensate and feed them too little. Well fed worms are happy worms. And when the worms are happy they will create a lot of healthy compost.
