CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Dear experts, how much does a pound of protein worms cost?

A pound of mealworms (yellow mealworms) costs about 32 yuan.

Mealworm breeding technology

Equipment and Facilities

The most common artificial breeding method for mealworms is box breeding, which can be adopted regardless of the scale of breeding. The main equipment includes insect breeding boxes, egg boxes and sieves.

1. Insect breeding: The box specifications are 100 cm long, 50 cm wide, and 8 cm high. Use wide tape to stick to the inner wall and flatten it to prevent the insects from escaping. Use 1 to 1.5 cm thick wooden boards on the sides of the box. The bottom of the box can be made of plywood or fiberboard, or a plastic basin.

2. Egg box: The surroundings are the same as the insect box, but the bottom is made of screen instead of plywood. The specifications should be slightly smaller than the insect box so that the egg screen can be placed in the insect box to form a set of egg collection boxes and reduce the workload.

3. Sieve: Several sieves of different specifications are needed, with mesh sizes of 100, 60, and 40. The sieve is used to screen out insect feces of different ages and separate insects. The structure of the sieve is similar to that of the egg box, except that the bottom mesh is different. The bottom mesh is made of 100, 60, or 40 mesh nylon or iron mesh. Yellow mealworms do not require high breeding sites. The room should be rat-proof, bird-proof, gecko-proof, etc., and prevent direct sunlight, keep dark, and well ventilated. The temperature in summer should be controlled below 33°C, and the temperature should be raised to above 20°C in winter if reproduction and production are to continue. If there is no production, the insects can enter the wintering state. The breeding room should pay attention to ventilation and dehumidification to prevent hypoxia and the breeding of harmful mites.

Feeding and management techniques

After the insect seeds are obtained, they are carefully screened to select those that are large, neat, vigorous and brightly colored. They are then fed in special boxes (pots).

Mealworms are social insects. When larvae live in groups, they rub against each other, which can promote blood circulation and digestion, and enhance mobility. However, if the density is too high, the larvae will crowd each other and rub against each other to generate heat, which will increase the local temperature and cause cannibalism. Therefore, the larval stocking density should generally be maintained at 3.5 to 6 kilograms per square meter. The larvae are large, so the density should be relatively small. The density should also be smaller when the room temperature is high and the humidity is high. The breeding density of adults for reproduction should be maintained at 5,000 to 10,000 per square meter.

Feeds are generally made of bran, rice bran, distiller's grains, peanut bran, etc., and vegetable leaves, tree leaves, melon and fruit peels, etc. In addition, when raising mealworms on a large scale, fermented feed can be used, using wheat straw, rice straw, corn stalks, etc. for fermentation and feeding. Fermented feed can reduce production costs, turn waste into treasure, and is rich in nutrition. It is a mealworm feed worth promoting. Practice has proved that the use of fermented feed is not only low in cost, but also can accelerate its growth rate and increase its reproduction rate.

1. Feeding mealworm larvae and separating pupae: After mealworm larvae hatch, they begin to eat the feed in the egg box. To prevent dryness and water shortage, some fresh food such as melon and fruit peels can be buried in the bran. They will basically finish eating in 10 to 20 days, and then the worm feces should be screened out as soon as possible (with a 100-mesh screen). The amount of feed put in each time is 10% to 20% of the total weight of the worms. Generally, the larvae are screened once every 3 to 5 days, and the feed is fed once every day.

When the larvae grow to more than 12 years old, they begin to pupate. When pupating, the pupae must be separated in time, otherwise they are easy to be bitten by larvae or adults. There are many ways to separate the pupae, such as manual selection and screening. A small number of pupae can be picked by hand, and when there are many pupae, they can be screened out with a sieve. The model of the sieve is selected: 100 mesh sieves are used for larvae before 3 years old, 60 mesh sieves are used for 3 to 9 years old, and 40 mesh sieves can be used for 10 years old and above. The separated pupae are concentrated in the box.

2. Separation of mealworm adults: Pupae will gradually emerge into adults after 5 to 8 days. In the same batch of pupae, the emergence time is inconsistent. The adults that emerge first will eat the pupae that have not yet emerged, so the adults that emerge should be separated from the pupae as soon as possible.

Vegetable leaf separation: Use vegetable leaves to attract adult insects, that is, wash and dry a large vegetable leaf and put it in the box, the adult insects will quickly crawl onto the leaf to feed, then take out the leaf together with the adult insects and put them in the egg sieve. Repeat this several times, and the adult insects can be separated.

Separation with black cloth: Cover the insect breeding box with a piece of wet black cloth. After 1 to 2 hours, most of the adult insects will crawl onto the black cloth. Move the black cloth to the egg sieve and pull the adult insects off. Repeat this separation process for convenience.

Manual separation: Manually picking out adult insects is labor-intensive and the insect bodies are easily injured, so you can use chicken feathers to sweep them into a cup and then move them into the egg sieve.

3. Rearing of mealworm adults and collection of their eggs: The rearing of mealworm adults is the key to the entire production technology. Only with proper rearing technology can a large number of mealworm eggs be obtained and production can be continuously expanded.

First, provide an egg-laying environment for adults. Put the separated adults into an egg sieve, put a piece of paper at the bottom of the egg sieve or directly put the egg sieve in the insect box to collect eggs. Sprinkle 0.5 to 0.6 cm thick bran evenly on the paper or insect box, then put some granular feed on the egg sieve to prevent the feed from falling under the net and causing the adults to have nothing to eat, and then feed them with an appropriate amount of fresh pumpkin slices, fresh carrot slices, etc. Feed for adults is continuously added depending on their feeding situation. The paper and insect box for collecting eggs are generally replaced every 3 to 5 days, and then new paper or insect box are taken for the same operation. The removed egg-laying paper can be stacked horizontally in sequence, generally 5 to 6 layers, and it should not be stacked too heavy to prevent the eggs from being crushed. After the eggs in the insect box are hatched into larvae, the larvae can be poured into a box together with the bran to improve the utilization rate of the box and increase the breeding density of the larvae in the box.

Adult insects are generally raised for 2 months. After 2 months, the egg-laying rate decreases and they should be eliminated.

Feed management

Both adults and larvae are omnivorous, and are mainly fed with bran and rice bran, and some green fodder is added. Adults are fed with fish meal, bean cake powder, etc. appropriately. Feed ratio can also be adjusted to increase the yield of mealworms, for example: 50% wheat flour, 40% bran or fine bran, 5% fish meal or bean cake powder, 3% yeast powder, 2% calcium powder. In addition, some green fodder such as chopped vegetable leaves can be added.