How to Become a Worm Farmer

Vermiculture, or worm farming, provides worms to bait shops for avid anglers, organic farms to enrich their soil and plant nurseries for backyard gardens. Become a worm farmer, and add the riches back into your farm or sell them for profit. Follow these steps to start your worm farm.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Lumber
• Peat moss
• Shredded newspaper
• Sawdust
• Red wigglers
• Spent grain
• Chicken mash
• Worm feed
• Shade cloth
• Heat lamps
• Sprinklers
• Worm grader

1. Build worm enclosures. Start small, both to save money and to allow for a learning curve as you grow. Use untreated lumber to fashion a 4 by 6 foot pen that is 2 feet high. Fill with peat moss, shredded newspaper or sawdust bedding.
2. Purchase your worms. Red wigglers, which can produce over 900 eggs a year, are the variety commercially raised for bait and compost.
3. Feed worms a proper diet. Red wigglers thrive on spent grain, chicken mash and commercial worm feed. Lay the food on top of the beds. The worms crawl up to feed.
4. Maintain optimal temperature and moisture levels. You must use shade cloth and heat lamps to keep temperatures between 40 and 85 degrees. Install drains and use sprinklers to keep the moisture level like that of a wrung out sponge.
5. Keep pests and diseases at bay. Feed worms only what they can consume in a two day period. Excess food attracts maggots and mold.
6. Harvest the worms using a motor driven worm grader. The worm grader separates the worms from the castings.
7. Market and sell the worms and their castings. After one year of cultivation, you should have enough bait worms and castings to sell to bait distributors, nurseries, florist shops and organic farms.