Growing your own nightcrawlers?

I am sure if there is a will there is a way to do this. Especially if you have land. Probably can do it in a terrarium also.
I cleaned my gutters out the other day and could have stocked a bait store there were so many in the sludge up there.

Nightcrawlers, or regular worms?

I already have a successful "regular" worm operation, but they are red worms.

Looking to grow nightcrawlers. I put 24 into my existing "worm farm" with reds, and they don't seem to reproduce, or at least not very fast. I've already gone through them all.

I did some serious research on this when I was a kid. Grandfather owned a bait shop and we talked about growing them. About all I remember was build a planter box, fill it with soft dirt, compost and such. Keep moist, and the population will double every 30 days.

quote:

---

I cleaned my gutters out the other day and could have stocked a bait store there were so many in the sludge up there.

---

curious how they got up there.

I also remember they like cow manure. Best I can do. Hope you can get ‘‘em going.

how to grow nightcrawlers

quote:

---

Birds eat worms and the eggs of the worms can survive digestion and get shitted out on a roof and into a gutter.

---

I don’t think I would have ever thought of that. I would have thought they would burn up on the roof but r get washed down in rain.



I was also skeptical of how fish make it to other ponds but apparently fish eggs are consumed by birds and shat out in distant ponds too. Also the attached to heron legs etc.



Pretty interesting , nature.

Right.


My FIL had an old trough that he kept worms in. He had a screw-in plug to let excess moisture out.

I think he sold the dirt as fertilizer (worm casting) and the worms as bait in the 50s for like a nickel per dozen.

We use to just take our leaves and keep them piled in the same spot in the corner of our back yard. We had plenty of trees so there was always a leaf pile. We fished a lot and never had to buy worms. Little work with a rake and they were easy to find.

Also brings back memories of using a mojo-stick. Homemade contraption you can use just about anywhere in the right conditions to get worms to come up to the surface. Take a wooden broom handle and cut notches into it evenly spaced every couple inches. Use another broom handle to rub up and down along the notched quickly while the end is in the dirt. Creates a lot of vibration and it drives the worms out of the ground.


ETA: and of course someone has it on YouTube.

LINK

Quite a few videos on YouTube. Apparently it’s calling “grunting” ??