By Teresa J. Frith
If you keep a worm bin for vermicomposting or breed worms for fishing, then you likely feed them kitchen scraps. However, there’s another great product you can use to feed your worms and fatten them up called worm chow.
What is worm chow?
It’s a concentrated type of food for your worms which has all the essential elements in it to grow healthy, happy and fat juicy worms. When worms are fed worm chow they not only grow faster and bigger, they also reproduce more.
In fact, many worm breeders use worm chow exclusively in their breeding bins so they get more bang for their buck and produce more babies. And best of all it’s totally safe to use around plants, people, animals or the general environment. It’s simple to use and a great food for when you first start a worm bin to get the worms off to a healthy start.
Worm chow is full of protein, minerals, vitamins and all the nutrients worms need to thrive. Plus, if you are having any kind of moisture issues where your worm bin is too wet, worm chow is great since it is a dry food. You can feed it to your worms until you can clear up the overly wet bedding. It also contains a type of grit worms need to digest their food.
So, you can either buy worm chow online or from various brick and mortar stores, or make your own. Here’s a recipe for worm chow.
Worm Chow Ingredients
2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup of alfalfa meal
1/8 cup of eggshells (You should bake your eggshells prior to using them, as otherwise there is a risk of them containing of salmonella, which is caused by the poop of the poultry that laid the eggs. Bake them by spreading out the shells onto a baking sheet, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and bake for 10 minutes.)
1/8 cup azomite (This provides the grit the worms need in order to be able to digest their food since worms don’t have any teeth. It also contains trace minerals worms need. Azomite is a mineral which is derived from a type of volcanic ash.)
Directions
Place the oats and cornmeal in some type of grinder or blender and grind them into a fine powder. Then, grind up the eggshells the same way. Next, mix them all together with the rest of your ingredients. The eggshells also provide additional grit needed by the worms, as well a being a source of calcium.
The other ingredients, i.e. the oats, alfalfa and cornmeal are what helps to quickly fatten up the worms. Just sprinkle worm chow over your bedding in your worm bin and your worms are sure to gobble it up.
All in all, worm chow is a great product for feeding your worms whenever you are short on kitchen scraps or just want to get them growing and breeding more worms fast.