Hey guys, it's Ann. Welcome to the channel. Today we're going to look in on my Wormbin 101 and we're going to discuss the five things that stress worm farmers out the most and what can you do about it. Alright, so this bin just is the normal paper bedding that I prepare and it has a mix of the red wigglers, the blue worms and the European night callers. So reds, blues and euros. And there's probably about a pound in here and I like to keep my bins a little bit more full than some people. This is a bus box that you can buy on Amazon and there's a link below to the bus box here. But one of the things that stresses people out, stressor number one, I don't know, whatever order these are in, it's not a matter of important importance. It's just things that stress people out. And one is bin bugs. And you can maybe you can see here that there are some springtails and some mites and some pill bugs in here. And some people stress out they're like, this is a worm bin. I don't want anything else in my worm bins. Well, that's that's really just not plausible. They need them, they're helpers. So honestly, you know, if you need to do something about it, it's for your own comfort and really not the worms, they're fine. They don't need you to take their little friends away from them. In fact, they're probably better off if you leave the little bugs alone. It's not a problem unless it's a problem for you. They are fine. Alright, stressor number two, how often do I have to look in on my worms? Well, worms in nature, they do what they want and they kind of scrounge around and they find stuff to eat. You don't need to look in on them every day. Again, that's kind of for you. If you're nosy and you want to be a helicopter worm parent, then you just know that they don't need you to look in on them that often. I look in on my worms once a week, once every other week. I have a lot of bins, so you know, there's a lot to do. So, but you don't need to look in on them every day, certainly not. Definitely don't need to be looked in on every day. And as a new worm farmer, if you only have one bin, you're going to kind of think, oh, geez, what are they doing in there? Do they need something? No, probably not. Not for an inside bin. They're not going to need your attention every single day. Stressor number three. What can I feed my worms? Well, in nature, they would just be eating whatever fell and died in the yard. But in your bin, you know, most of us have compost worm bins because we want them to eat our kitchen scraps. And I've done a lot of forbidden foods and for the most part in moderation is the key here. So I feed them basically everything. I don't put meat in here. I have one bin that I'm just trying eggs on. I've seen people do porchups. I've seen people do lots of things. But this is a small bin, so I don't do very many or very large volumes of odd food. You know, you want the worms to get to the food quickly because you don't want it to rot and get pests like mice or fruit flies. Those are not helpers. They are not helping. So as long as you give them the food that they can eat relatively quickly or you bury it deeply, you're going to want them to eat it in short order so that it does not attract things and give you maggots or mice. So that's another thing. What can you feed them? You can feed them just about anything, but really the most important thing is how much do you feed them? And that is probably stressor number four. What number am I on? I don't know. Anyway, how much do I feed my worms? The part where they say that one pound of worms will eat one pound of food is not very realistic, especially not in the beginning. And it is temperature dependent. The food is depending on what kind of worms do you have? You know, if you have African night crawlers and you put a lot of kitchen scraps in there, they may not be able to eat as much if they were blue worms or red wigglers. But you know, if you put just bedding, red wigglers and blue worms aren't going to be eating as much. So it depends on what kind of worms you have. It also depends on what kind of temperature that you have. If it's kind of cold, they will slow down and they won't eat as much. So the best thing to keep yourself from being stressed is, you know, for a bend this size with a pound of worms, give them a handful. Whatever your hand is, big hand, little hand, whatever. And put it in one particular place and then come back in a week. Is the food still there? Or is there just a tiny bit of food? Then you can give them another handful in another place. And this is how you do it when you first start. You need to learn how much your worms are eating on any particular month of the year. Temperature depending if are you in Australia or you in Iowa, it matters. You know, how dry is your bin? And that is another one of your stressors is, you know, what moisture should my bin be at? Well, the worms, like the moisture you're seeing right now, is drier than many people who breed worms would keep their worm bin at. This is at about 60 to 70 percent moisture. You know, flows through my hands very easily. The worms are okay in this. They are just fine. And I keep it this way for manageability on my part. The worms, if it was much, much wetter, they would still be fine, but I wouldn't be fine. And after all, I have to live with them. But as far as moisture goes, this bin is a good moisture. See, kind of made a ball, you poke it, it falls apart. That is what you're looking for. Now, a lot of people run them much, much wetter to where it's kind of almost peanut butter consistency or mashed potatoes if you don't have peanut butter where you are. And from what I understand, that does help breeding. The higher the moisture, the more the worms are able to get around and breed. That's what I've read in my research books that I've read. And I'll link those below as well as in my Amazon store. But so the moisture is another stressor that people worry about a lot. Now, if the worms get too dry, they will shrink. And not only will they shrink, they'll probably, you know, go to the pockets in the corners and and stuff like that. But as soon as you add moisture again, they'll be fine. And even if you did the worst thing ever and let it completely dry out, there's probably still cocoons. And if you add moisture and new food and betting, you'll end up with the bin that you can rehabilitate. And it'll be active again because the cocoons can survive much more extreme circumstances than the worms themselves. So I hope that this video is helpful for the people that stress out about their worms and and just looking at them right now, they're good, but they do need some food. And because I forgot to bring any food down, worm bin 101 is going to get some worm chow. Now my worm chow is what I feed when I run out of people food scraps. And it is equal parts cornmeal, wheat flour, ground oatmeal, and ground bird seed. And I'm just going to incorporate this in all through. And I think they might even need a little bit more betting because it looks like they're starting to make some pretty good castings. And over time, you will, you know, you will get the hang of it. You know, I know it's very stressful when you're first a worm farmer. And you really don't know what to expect. You don't know what's good, what's bad. So hopefully this list will help you and will help you not to be so stressed out. Now I do have a worm bin 101 series that I will link right over there. If you like this video, give it a muddy thumbs up. If you're not a member of my worm family, click that subscribe and if you want to know what I'm doing when I'm doing it, ring that bell icon. All right guys, thanks for hanging out with me and my worms and everybody, have a good day.