Glad you returned the news to the guys - there is a newspaper mâché thing they like to do with it, sometimes making dense layers, sometimes strange bunkers or pods - bins within bins made out of slick, dense, newspaper-mâché. When I'm doing the weekly turning I always find these relics.

As for scraping off cocoons, I don't think they ever have a problem taking care of business. To spoil them an old corn cob would work well, but just moving across the runnels in corrugated cardboard should be effective.

You shouldn't need more airflow than you have. A weekly turning gives them all the air they need. :)

I have never turned the bed. I have read both that it is good and bad to turn the bed. So far I have let it be. I have castings falling through the bottom of my bin (screen mesh and a bunch of 1/2 inch holes). For turning the bin how do you do it?

I personally turn it by handfuls working my way around (and leaving alone the sections where they are especially busy. I only fully go through with it when a bin has a smell.

In the book I linked on my thread, CRSU turn their bins once weekly, a learned practice after encountering difficulties. Offenders made bins out of 55 gallon plastic drums which were sawed in half. These were placed on a cart and steadied with a board which they were hinged to, allowing the drum to easily be tilted for fast turning.

I used to turn the mix a little just to see whats going on and to keep it more aerated, but not much anymore. I have a little forked tool that came with my factory 360 that I sometimes use for that. Rather than use layered sheets of paper as a cover some people use I instead manual shred paper as a cover mainly to keep fruit flies from becoming a major problem.

In the ideal world a worm bin wouldn't need turning because the worms would take care of aeration throughout the bedding material. However I think some turning is often helpful in our un-ideal world, especially to correct problems like too-wet or clumped-up areas. But I wouldn't want to create a system that actually required regular turning. I'm aiming to do as little heavy lifting as possible because it causes me serious problems with my shoulders and other moving parts.

Worms don't like to be disturbed. Please don't turn the content of bin. Worm casting is actually very good at draining excess moisture. The most common misconception is the need for bedding. Bedding is the most likely cause of wetness problems if shredded paper is the main material because they tend to plus up the holes at the bottom. Only add brown material to cover up organic scrap. You are basically letting organic matter rot and worms digest the decomposted matter. Bedding will not absolved all the fluid that will come out of kitchen scrap. Drainage holes are a must. Don't EVER have a bin without them.

You want to make sure leachate comes out the bottom of bin which means drainage is good. Nothing else is necessary, absolutely no need for a fan. Worms love moisture, but not stagnant water.

Since I use the tiered tray method since I have the factory 360 about the only tray I do stir around is the bottom tray or harvest tray. I want to see how how many worms might be in the that tray and maybe what consistancy it is to know if something might be wrong. Since the top trays are feeding trays I dont stir those only to maybe bury the food and to see if they have eaten what I put in before. But for the most part nowadays no I dont disturb them but in the early days yep I did because I wasnt altogether sure of my method and how the worms were doing. One thing is for sure [mine are inside] if worms start coming out or you see some on the floor you know something is not quite right.

I definitely have open drainage for leachate, but I have only seen some fine castings come through the screen (window screen over a bunch of drainage/air holes). I think because I try to keep that rung out sponge level of moisture. I have yet to see a any leachate come from the bin; But it is a fairly young bin and I have been doing light feedings. I plan to step up the feeding because I have 2,000 worms and have been doing 2.5lb once weekly feedings. When I check on the feeds all I see is lots of worms and I can't really identify any of the feed after 3-4 days, just a bunch of worms that seem to be upset with my prodding. I am added a 3.5lb feed yesterday (doing Sunday weekly feeds, last feed actually ended up being on a Monday) and eventually step it up to 7 pounds per week. I have lots of watery stuff like cucumbers, lettuce, squash(lots), melon, etc (that I put in the food processor) and I imagine they are going through it faster than if I had chunks of stuff. I really question the need for bacteria to form on food before they can eat it because my worms seem to be all over the blended stuff within hours. I really hate to have a stinky bin but it seems like the only way to find out what they can handle is adding more feed until I can see the feed remaining after several days or (eeek) it gets stinky? But 2,000 worms should be able to handle 7 pounds per week right?

Don't you want to go down in history as the first worm herder never to have had a too-wet or stinky bin? :-) I don't have direct experience with feeding blended food, but I can see that it presents a challenge for visually confirming whether food has been eaten or not. If your worm population seems to be keeping up with or even staying ahead of the feeding rate, another thing to try might be adding un-blended food?

As for bacteria, it *does* form on food within hours - in fact it's already on the food at the outset - but I think "waiting for breakdown by bacteria" does take longer when the food is not pureed. Pureed food can probably go into worm guts as-is, and then they poop out whatever isn't digestible to them at that point - doesn't mean someone's not going to re-eat it if it has more decomposing to do. ICK.

Supposedly some foods like citrus rinds have compounds that are bad for worms. Bacteria and fungus will break those down so that worms can consume. That may be true of some other worm bin foods as well. Anyway blending and freezing will still speed the process, creates more surface area for them to spread and breaks down cellular structure and some natural defenses against decomposition. Not necessary of course, but should speed things up.