The Complete Guide to Earthworm Farming: Do You Know These Practical Tips?
The earthworm is a species distributed across multiple ecosystems, can be used as biological fertilizer, to improve soil, and is currently widely farmed. Below is a summary of the complete guide to earthworm farming for your reference.
1. Earthworm farming conditions and environment
The earthworm is a nocturnal animal; it generally stays hidden in soil burrows during the day and comes out at night to be active, emerging to move about from 8 pm to around 4 am the next day in summer and autumn, and both its feeding and mating take place under dark conditions. Secondly, it likes to live in moist, loose soil rich in organic matter, and the surrounding environment should be quiet and warm; when farming earthworms, a dim environment free of noise and vibration is needed.
2. Stocking earthworms for farming
Before putting earthworms into the farming site, adjust the moisture of the well-rotted feed, spread it evenly 10cm deep along the trenches dug in the mulberry field, then evenly place in earthworm breeding stock containing egg capsules and young worms, and put another 5cm of feed on top. The farming density can be controlled at 2-2.5kg/m2 or 10,000-15,000 worms/m2; in principle the density can be slightly higher in the early stage and gradually reduced in the later stage. In addition, there are many varieties of earthworms, and you can choose according to your needs, such as Pheretima guillelmi, Pheretima hubeiensis, Daping No. 2 earthworm, Pheretima californica, and Pheretima aspergillum.
3. Preparing earthworm feed
The earthworm is an omnivorous animal; apart from glass, plastic and rubber, which it does not eat, decomposed matter of other substances can all be fed to it. Generally the main items are crop straws such as corn, wheat and rice; various livestock and poultry manures such as pig, cattle, sheep, chicken and duck; vegetable leaves, melon rinds, fruit, waste paper and some industrial waste, and so on.
Reference formula: take 100 kg of fresh cow manure, 4 kg of distiller's yeast, 12 kg of corn straw powder, and a mixture of 18 kg of bran husk powder and shiitake mushroom fungus substrate, mix thoroughly, pile on the ground, sprinkle with water, then cover with plastic film and ferment under anaerobic conditions at a fermentation temperature between 40-60°C, turning the pile once about every 10 days and adding water, fermenting for 30 days; after turning and rotting, the earthworm feed is obtained. Put this earthworm feed into the farming box, and stock 2500-3500 earthworm breeding worms per square meter of box surface.
4. Rearing temperature and humidity for earthworms
The best farming temperature for earthworms is 20-27°C. In the hot summer season, pig manure can be fermented in a manure storage pit with added water until mushy, then poured directly in strips onto the manure material of the worm bed; in summer, also try to sprinkle water once every afternoon and combine this with covering with rice straw to retain moisture, while in spring and autumn sprinkle water once every 3-5 days.
5. Harvesting earthworms
Arrange the harvesting of earthworms reasonably according to the farming density and production needs. The main harvesting method is to use a specially made iron flat-toothed small nail rake to shovel out and loosen the manure material of the worm bed, then pick out by hand the manure material containing more earthworms and pile it on plastic film; because earthworms fear light, after 15-20 minutes the earthworms gradually move downward until they reach the plastic film, then gradually scrape off the surface layer of manure material and put it back into the worm bed, and what remains at the end is clean earthworms.
Although earthworm farming is not very difficult, during the farming process you should pay attention to preventing and treating the occurrence of feed and protein poisoning symptoms. If poisoning occurs, handle it promptly, such as spraying clear water, loosening the material bed, and so on.