Well, we live and we learn.

A few weeks ago I noticed that a few worms in my large flow through bin were acting odd. They were on the surface on the bed and upon inspection I noticed the swelled body sections. Well I knew right away what that meant, “protein poisoning.” For some reason I thought that I could get by with doing what everyone said would lead to this problem. I had succumbed to the feeling of invincibility and now me and my worms were suffering.

“Protein poisoning” is the common title of the malady that result when to much “rich” foods are added to the worm’s habitat. It is easily avoided by not going crazy adding tons of “rich” foods to the worm system. Even if to much food is added the worms should still be OK if they have some food free bedding material on bottom to flee to.

The thing is that I had been getting lots of free food lately and did not want it to go to waste. Also seeing how much the worms mass had been increasing since adding this food stock I thought, like the Indian chief, “Little do little good, lot will do lot of good.” So I added food by the buckets.

Well this led to a fruit fly bloom, so I figured I would toss the bed and cover the food with bedding and them pesky flies will go away. Hey it worked too. I got by with doing this for a while but then one day it bit me and my worm suffered. Sorry guys from now on I will be more careful. To see how the problem got fixed read part 2

Matthew Wilson