If you are looking into it as a business option I would use newspapers as bedding and kitchen scraps as the food. If you already have these items around it would eliminate overhead costs. (But may be the information you found was specific to bait worms?) Also, a great book on vermiculture is "Worms Eat My Garbage" by Mary Appelhof. It's a small book that I think might be good for a 10-year-old.

Melanie,
Thank you for the information, sorry i didn't reply earlier, my modum had a burn out and we had to wait for parts,, i will look for the book you spoke of. and we have plenty of new papers and table scraps on hand and again thanks
Sherie

If you go to a fishing store, they usually sell small styrofoam containers of red worms. That could help you with the pricing and packaging.

You might want to start a little smaller than than a pool/sandbox just to get a feel for how it works. The rubbermaid containers are great, and you can punch holes in it easily with the end of a hot glue gun.

Kitchen scraps are excellent to use and usually plentiful in the summer when we are eating so much summer fruit like melons and salads. Also coffee grounds, tea bags. I'm not sure at all about the veg. oil.

Worms Eat My Garbage is a very fine and helpful book which will give you a lot of good ideas.

What a wonderful Mom you are to help your son with an interesting project like this. If his school does a science fair, he could use this as his project. Good luck.

Thanks everyone for the help. We did go with rubber maid boxes i just used a small drill and drilled holes about every 2 to 2-1/2 inches across the bottom, but now the problem is we checked on them and there is white mildew starting to show on top if the soil, i removed it and took the carpet off the top to let the soil breath a little better for a little while, any idea as to why this happened i hope it was just lack of air,, the soil is still wet i think maybe my son got a little to much water in there even with the holes. we will see, he is going to harvest his first bunch of worms, ( we was able to catch over 80 in two days thought this was a good start to see how they sell) so will be taking them to market tomorrow. Now all i have to do is help count them into containers,, moms always get the slimy part

Worms Eat My Garbage is a wonderful book for redworms, but I think Sherie is probably just interested in the larger worms, such as nightcrawlers. When I was a kid, we would go out at night with a flashlight and catch hundreds of them. Also, I don't know how tall your containers are, but a friend of mine had a few hundred nightcrawlers crawl out of the box. I still don't think his wife has forgiven him. You are right about the lack of air. without airflow, you will eventually end up with a very smelly condition. If I remember right from the previously mentioned book, it is called anaerobic decomposition. Good luck with your project. Your son should keep notes to use on a future science project.

I am new to this and have a rubbermaid bin. I do get some earthworms in it because I drilled holes in the bottom (its outside).

If your son is catching them to resell I am wondering if a hole in the ground might work better (and attract more) He would need to add stuff to it to keep them happy so they stay. Im thinking leaves, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds. That would keep them happy and make them want to stay. When he is ready to seperate to sell he can just dig the hole.

I say this because I started lasagna gardening last summer. Areas that had no worms are loaded now, and a using a hole or even pile may be easier to maintain with less worry of bin failure, which may be more likely with soil in the bin instead of paper or coir.

Not sure if my thoughts are true, just some things that I would worry about trying to keep nightcrawlers contained in soil. (and after finding the many my daughter decided were her pets in different things in her room) :)

Good luck and let us know how it goes

Carey

Well selling is going good and now he has made business cards to hand out (his design) he named his business freaky beyond belief worm farm becouse it is freaky that mom is touching the worms. but it turned out to be a cute card with a fishing worm sitting on a hook on one side with eyes bugging out and mouth open,looking across at a large face of a fish on the other side. right now he is selling as fast as we can find them so now i am looking into finding someplace to order them,,, sure would save my back and he needs to get a breeding stock going. Kind of hard if they sell so fast. and not sure that we want to try to breed the ones we find in the yard. Now we need to find red worms to, have had many ask him about getting some. Thanks for all the great tips so far. back to the internet
sherie and dakota.

sherie..Take a look at: www.trinity-ranch.com
Bob Ingram is a good guy, who will take good care of you and your boy with some ENC's.