Do worms migrate up to harvest?

by Bob
(New Mexico)

I think I understand now that just the compose material is left for use in making the tea. So no eggs are left in the compose material. All the worms are hatched.

The tea and the castings to use when planting plants are a couple benefits I hadn't realized until going through your material.

I still have a question about a method of harvesting. It's putting a bin (31 gal.) on top of the worm bin and letting the worms migrate to the top bin. This would be don when the bedding material is pretty much finished composing. You mentioned filling the bin to 3/4 full. Is a 31 gallon bin 3/4 full to large for the worms to crawl up into the upper bin?


Answer from BigTex Worms:
Unfortunately, there are eggs left in the compost material, no matter what you do. So, you can do one of two things, place your finished castings in a 5 gallon bucket (or something similar), keep it moist and top feed a small amount of food (pumpkin in skin or watermelon works great) and harvest the new hatched baby worms for 4-6 weeks after harvesting OR use the castings as is and lose the worms. Because I am a worm farmer, I wrangle the babies.
As far as using the "migrate up method" I am not a huge fan. I simply have not seen it be successful. My suggested methods are either pile harvesting and starting a new bin with the worms harvested. OR corner feeding and wrangling/harvesting them that way over a few weeks.
The idea of them migrating up to the feed seems logical but in reality they hang around in the lower part.
So all in all, you start one 30 gallon bin, then when it becomes 3/4 full, harvest and start another bin, then "split" the worms you harvest between the two 30 gallon bins and repeat this process every 3-4 months. See how the population expands rapidly???
Excellent questions, keep them coming!


Thanks,
Liz
BigTex Worms