Earthworms

[Craig Bellamy]

I have a fairly large garden free from pesticides so I have been feeding my T's on plentiful supplies of earthworms without issues. As far as I know they are fairly nutritious, unlike most supplies from pet shops and are of completely course free and natural!!

Long term has anyone else noticed any adverse effects?

[Colin D Wilson]

Bearing in mind an earthworm can travel up to 50 meters a night.
"Pesticide free" can not be fully guaranteed.

Regards

Colin

[Peter Lacey]

I've considered this as we have a compost container where all our edibles go. Its got a good worm population and I've fed some to my CWD. I'd be interested to hear opinions but I wouldn't want to loose the worm in the substrate.

[Ray Gabriel]

Bearing in mind an earthworm can travel up to 50 meters a night.
"Pesticide free" can not be fully guaranteed.

Regards

Colin

Maybe if you keep them on damp paper for 30 days (changing the paper every couple of days) they might be good for the spiders, Reptile people do this with snails for Skinks i believe.
Ray

[Colin D Wilson]

If i remember rightly Ray the worms do detoxify after a few weeks or so if kept in sterile soil and fed cleared decomposing veg matter. i helped out in a survey for an Agricultural College in the area mid 80's, they theorised that the bacteria in some bovine diseases could be spread by earthworms and did studies to prepare for the next out break of such.
we injected earth worms with a nontoxic dye and then released them in a field, we then checked under cow pats (lovely) over the period of a few weeks and logged the pattern and distance of any dyed worms. the furthest recorded was 65 meters in 9 hours, this was from an earthworm 5.5 inches fully extended.
so in theory earthworms in your garden could come from "old mrs smiths" three gardens away after she's poured weed killer down the night before.
Damp kitchen roll and clean fresh greens / romaine lettuce for a month is the best way for "cleaning out" your average snail, skink and bosc monitor keepers do it often enough without any problems at all.

[Craig Bellamy]

Very useful advice Colin and Ray. I think what I will do, is dig in the compost as there are plenty there.

What I could do is get a new dustbin barrel filled with compost and put as many worms as I can find in there, probably hundreds! Leave it for a month. Great food and it's free.

Furthermore, I'd like to know if anyone has actually successfully reared a T solely on earthworms.

[James Box]

i've not tried T's on worms...i hear they'll take them, though.
hmm interesting. i think if the worms are eating compost, it's likely they contain lots of nutrients. in that case, they may be a very good food source indeed.

[Craig Bellamy]

Well James, my T's love them! I just throw them in and unlike a cricket that runs and worms wiggles which is like a maggot to a fish.

I'd imagine that travelling 65 metres through the soil in 9 hours you'd need an awful lot of muscle for that!

[Colin D Wilson]

if you work it out it's only approx 12cm per minute (a garden snail can do nearly three times that in top gear), worms will travel over the top of the soil in between the grass blades at night especially if it's been raining.
most worms only ranged up to 50 meters with some as little as 1 or 2.

you're right though, they're protein packed under the right conditions, and i can't see any reason why a T can't be reared on them myself. it's only really like rearing a T soley on crickets as a single food stuff.

[Craig Bellamy]

Earthworm Nutritional Guide

Found some useful info

from www.wormdigest.org


"Earthworms are rich in nutrients with high protein. According to measurements, the crude protein in dry earthworms reaches about 70%, while in wet earthworms about 10-20%.

The amino acids of earthworm protein are complete, especially the contents of Glutamic acid, Leucine and Lysine, among which Arginine is higher than fish meal, and Tryptophan is 4 times higher than in blood powder, and 7 times higher than in cow liver.

Earthworms are rich in Vitamin A and Vitamin B. There is 0.25 mg of Vitamin B1 and 2.3 mg of Vitamin B2 in each 100 g of earthworms. Vitamin D accounts for 0.04%-0.073% of earthworms’ wet weight."

Reference

Worm Digest, Vermiculture Industry in Circular Economy by Li Kangmin

URL: http://www.wormdigest.org/content/view/135/2/

[Craig Bellamy]

Proof, T.apophysis devouring an earthworm

[Peter Lacey]

with all those proteins and nutrients you're going to end up with the Mr T of the T world.

If you do decide to set up a compost you'll have to wait for the worms to really breed in large numbers. It's not something that happens straight away but as you fill it up with all your waste vegetable matter the worms will be attracted as well as other insects. The worms all look in great shape and without the soil inside them as you'd find them in the earth. I'd suggest you purchase a proper compost bin which allows you to remove the compost from the bottom via a shutter which is great for the garden and lifting the lid will reveal plenty of worms. For some reason many like the moist conditions on the inside of the lid. It will also allow the liquid that's formed by the breakdown of vegetable matter to escape into the soil. If you choose to use a barrel or bin without the bottom removed you'll need to create drainage to remove the liquid. In this scenario you'll be faced with some extremely pungent liquid but its fantastic for plants.

Obviously all this will help reduce your bin waste too, something very topical at the moment. Its also possible to get starter worms and you may find certain species better than others.

One thing you may find. Compost creates heat and this may attract mice. I've given up counting how many we've found in there.

Thanks for the worm site link, I'm very tempted to try a worm for my Klugi tomorrow.

[James Box]

nice info, Craig
might have to look into this!!

[Craig Bellamy]

To be frank, I'm pretty excited about my investigation. It could change the way we feed T's, because lets face it, crickets are not convenient in many respects.

If you could have an unlimited supply which are:-

• Free!
• with no wastage (no parts left like exskeloton to clean up etc)
• non-wasted food (i.e dying crickets)
• quiet(no cricket noise)
• free living, (but not free living in your house! )
• clean (no stinky bacteria infested cricket housing)
• out of the way in the garden compost
• highly nutritious (perhaps more than crickets, due to their conditions)

supply of fresh food, then perhaps T's would end up healthier and it would make looking after them a lot easier as I am sure we've all run out of crickets and been stuck for options.

What I'm going to do, is feed my T.apophysis on nothing but compost earthworms and let everyone know how it does over the months, then maybe it will be big enough to tackle this monster

[James Box]

lol, do let us know!
in a sort of similar spirit to this, i gave a number of my animals wax worms tonight
mixed reviews, really...one of the scorps thought it was Christmas, three others ran away, my C. fasciatum juvie instantly pounced on his/hers, wheras my L. parahybana slings ran away...
the P striata's didn't seem to care (one of them was on the inside lid i had to unscrew from its jar in order to throw the waxworm in, and stayed there (actually well-behaved) even when the lid was off! i was pretty tense til i got the lid back on ever so slowly!)
also, my S heros arizonensis centipede pounced, whereas my H. chilensi centi decided to try to attack me instead

well, guess it'll be pretty clear by tomorrow if they've all eaten.