Counting Worms - something everyone should do once!

16 years ago

Hi all,

Well I stocked another two 10 gal. totes this morning with 100 worms a piece from my Worm Factory, but this time I weighed and counted them. Very interesting.

100 adults (EF's) = 72 gms = 2.5 oz

The second lot of 100 result was almost identical:

100 adults (EF's) = 74 gms = 2.6 oz

The conclusion:

1000 adults would be 730 gms, or 25.5 oz.

1 lb of adults would be 627 worms

I counted them out into a cup half full of compost (zero'd the scales of course), and 100 worms just disappeared into it. When I dumped the cup out into my bin, it still didn't look like many worms as they scurried down into their new digs.

Now they did't look very big and fat to me, but it sure proves that it can be very deceptive. Given that they consumes x times their mass in food, maybe you don't need as many worms as I first thought.

In closing, I'd like to apologies to any professional worm seller from all of us out here who ALWAYS doubting the numbers vs weight of worms received. I'll never doubt again, of course I don't intend to buy ever again lol.

Try it yourself (the count that is), and I'll bet you're just as surprised as me!

Cheers

PS For a real challenge, try naming all 100! lol. 4 yr old son thought I was serious and started naming! precious moment indeed.

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Comments (8)

plumiebear
16 years ago
marauder, your worms are super models. LOL. j/k. I think they're probably average. The range I remember is between 500-800 adults in a pound. I've also read worm farmers discuss worm fattening methods, which always seemed crooked to me. It's like injecting raw chickens with water to increase their weight.

Although I didn't verify it, I was told 1 cup (236 cc) of worms weighed 8 oz. (227 g). That's pretty close to 1 cc per gram. I also read elsewhere that the "ideal" adult weighed 1 g. That's quite a bit heavier than your .73 g/worm.

Andrew
curt_grow
16 years ago
Andrew I have raised worms for personal fish bait . Yes any thing I could find on making a bigger fatter worm is of interest to me and of course used on a small separate population. Don't mean I'm crooked!LOL Thanks for the info.

Curt :-)
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marauder01
Original Author
16 years ago
Wow, I'd like to see a 1 gram per worm EF!

I found a fella here in Aust selling "BIG REDS" for fishing, and his weights quoted are .8 down to .5 gm each, so I think he is selling adult EF's for fishing (which I have no prob with at all! lol).

I am however after some ENC's to breed for fishing, but no-one here sells them. They do sell ANC's, but I believe they are more temp sensative (tropical worm) than the ENC's and harder to keep / breed.

I have emailed our quarantine dept. to see if I'm allowed to bring some in from OS, so we'll see.

If anyone knows someone with ENC's in Australia, let me know and I'll happily buy 100 to start me off! That will be a nice little experiment, with trout as the payoff. Mmmmm.

Thanks for the info Andrew, and Curt. I might try the fat-ner route with a bin and see if I can improve the size of an EF too.

So little time and so much to try. Fun but!. lol.
Cheers
plumiebear
16 years ago
Curt: no offense intended. I'd also like my worms to be fatter. :-) I wish I had the link to the discussion I read, but it was clear these worm sellers were trying to spike their worm weight rather than growing healthy & hefty worms. I don't recall the details, but it even seemed the stuff they were feeding them may have been unhealthy for the worms. Sort of like steroids - short term pay off with long term side effects. Doesn't matter for worms destined to be fish food, but not so good for worms meant to work a worm bin.

I didn't know you were a worm seller. Must be tough to farm worms commercially in zone 4.

Marauder: yeah, I was wondering about that 1 g stat myself. They did say it was an "ideal" weight, so maybe there are some giants out there. Maybe we should start a "heaviest red wiggler" contest. Performance enhancing substances allowed.

I spent a few hours yesterday turning my compost bin and harvesting worms from it. I set aside 2 or 3 handfuls of compost with worms to start a 1 gal. observational bin, but just didn't have any energy left to do a worm count.

Andrew
curt_grow
16 years ago
Andrew: I am not a seller. I meant for my use only. No offense taken. If I don't catch a fish the troops go back to the bin I want them to be healthy. To bad some one would try to pump up the weight of the worms they want to sell with chemicals or drugs of some kind. I do have ENC's mixed in with the wigglers they seem to mix well they have co-oped for about 4 years now.

Curt :-)
plumiebear
16 years ago
I found a one grammer...but what species is it? This big guy was under a brick. I know it's tough to ID worms via photo, but any opinions? fetida? hortensis? something else?

Andrew

Here is a link that might be useful: Jabba the worm
lkittle
16 years ago
Hi plumiebear; I think the worm you have is a Lumbricus Rubellus. It looks like a small flat tailed Lumbricus Terrestris.
plumiebear
16 years ago
Hi, likittle. You're the 3rd reliable person to tell me that, so I've filled a section of the small observational worm bin with garden soil to make it a little more comfortable and will watch closely. Eve told me in another forum that you had kept these guys in a worm composting bin for some time despite their "deep soil burrowing" status. It's good to know it won't die without a burrow.

Someone pointed out the spade tail as a feature of the burrowing earthworms. It's not clear in the video, but the link below goes to a photo that clearly shows the flattened tail.

Andrew

Here is a link that might be useful: