I,ve burned up several also. I have replaced them with yard sale units. The cost is about $1.00 ea for ones that work. I think its the egg shells doing the damage.

larry

You might try a food processor instead, as they are designed to chop food, while a blender isn't.

Why are you doing that? It's too much work, and it's the worms' work anyway! LOL!

They seem to eat it quite a bit faster.

the key word is seem - what you really mean is the additions become invisible quickly as they mingle into the bedding - chopping things small and making sure there's lots of bacteria to work on the increased surface area will do it fine

Bill

I have had good results using a small coffee grinder for the eggshells (Krups makes a good one) bought second hand, of course, for a few bucks. This will save wear and tear on the blender.

Hi Vermiman!

I don't have an answer on how to stop burning up your blender's but as for the egg shells I use a rolling pin. The one with the hard almost stonelike surface rather than wooden works best.

I let the eggshells dry out then lay out a section of newspaper and then roll. As the shells break down I push them into a pile and roll some more until I get the consistency I want.

Then I sift to get out the smallest particles for the bin. The larger pieces that don't crush small enough I save for the next batch of shells.

If you think it's the eggshells burning out your blender's maybe you might want to try this method.

Hope it helps!
Jim

Try using a Magic Bullet Food Processor. Has more then one use so even if you buy it new you won't feel guitly and it is pretty tough where it shouldn't have a problem grinding up the eggshells.

Just cut the banana peels and other items like that with a knife in strips. Put the eggshells in some water and blend them up. Put vegetable scraps in plastic containers or bags in the sun and that will start the baterial process within a day, and soften everything up as well, and you can even pound on the plastic bags and mush up that stuff without a blender. I think it's important to give the worms a varied diet if you can as they are in a contained space. Can't hurt.

My husband found an old sink and we bought a garbage disposal to grind our food. Sure costs less than replacing blenders!:) We just run a hose to if with drain holes in the catch bucket. This works wonderful for us. We use a coffee grinder for the egg shell. HTH!

I've been composting with worms for 11 + yrs and I just give it to them as I finish eating without going to all that extra work. Also I crush the egg shells when I clean out the bin and the worms have had a chance to really get to work on them.

Penny

Are you filling the blender too full before you start it? That is easy to do with summer vegetable trimmings. Are you using enough water and not too much ingredients, so when they are blended, the mix is thin and easy to pour? We can tell from the sound of the blender when we are working it too hard, long before it burns out. We cut up fibrous skins to avoid any threads getting wound around the base of the blades. When cutting anything, you have to match the blade speed to the material to get the job done right. In that respect, blending is no different than using a saw, manual or power.
For a response to those who don't blend, how big are the teeth on a worm? Do you think that cutting up their food might help them eat easier?

joenaz,
adding enough water to the food to make a blender survive the work is probably adding more water to the bin than it needs. The food itself is mostly water already. Having lots of bedding coated with the liquified food could cause problems with odors and pests if not carefully managed.

The worms are more interested in eating the bacteria on the food than eating the food itself. Chopping or blending the food is simply making more surface area for the bacteria to work on.

The only foods I've found so far that the worms leave alone too long (and hence making me wonder if we should have blended it up) have been chunks of carrot. Otherwise they even eventually got to the chunks of potato.