Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Do any of you turtle stewards vermicompost? My wife would not be thrilled at me doing this at home (although she puts up with more than enough from me!), but my friend and I started some cultures at work. Several weeks later, they are producing worms galore. Great, healthy, year-round food for your turtles, they grow on kitchen scraps, and the cultures are easy and do not smell at all! Good compost is the other byproduct.
I think this is a no-brainer for anyone keeping turtles, and a better food than the mealworms etc. There are plenty of websites with details. I basically started with a big plastic container. To that I added moistened, shredded paper (from my office, a waster product). This is kept moist...not too dry or soggy. Add the worms. YOu can not use regular earthworms or night-crawlers. You can buy worms for composting or many bait shops sell "trout worms" which are the right species. Add kitchen scraps (potato peels, apple cores, old lettuce, bread, etc. etc.)...you will soon get a feel how much to add, how often. The worms will settle in, but then start reproducing for you. Your turtles will love you! This is great for hatchlings being head-started in winter. Try it!

I vericompost, but the red worms that you typically use for that are very acidic in overall content and can be toxic to some reptiles, so are generally not recommended for feeding. "Garden" worms and "nightcrawler" types are better food. But don't take my word for it, do your homework.
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1.0 pastel ball python
0.1 mojave ball python
0.1 normal ball python
0.2 3-toed box turtles
2.3 eastern box turtles
0.0.5 3-striped mud turtle
1.0 northern diamondback terrapin
2.1 tiger salamander
1.1 red-sided garter
1.0 anerythristic red-sided garter
1.1 Iowa snow plains garter
1.1 Het butter stripe cornsnake
0.1 anerythristic motley cornsnake
1.1 Blue garter (Puget Sound)

boxienuts-
I had not heard that. Do you have a reference article or link?
I would think the loaded guts of the worms would be good for them, depending on what the worms are eating.

I feed a variety of things to my turtles, including wild collected worms, so perhaps that is fine. Thanks!

I have never heard of toxicity, but most of my box turtles don't seem to like the taste of red wigglers (trout worms, European worms, European drift worms, etc.). It is a shame, as the success you described has been echoed by some of my gardener friends.

I may set up a culture. My European Pond turtles eat them with impunity, and have never exhibited any illness. They have an enormous appetite, so your suggestion would be very helpful for me.

Thanks!

http://www.gartersnake.info/care/feeding.phtml

"Never use red wigglers (Eisenia foetida), which are the worms used in vermicomposting and are sometimes sold as trout bait: they are reportedly toxic to garter snakes. There is apparently another species of red worm used in vermicomposting that is fine to feed to garter snakes, but unless you’re certain which is which, it’s best to avoid vermicomposting worms, to be safe."
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1.0 pastel ball python
0.1 mojave ball python
0.1 normal ball python
0.2 3-toed box turtles
2.3 eastern box turtles
0.0.5 3-striped mud turtle
1.0 northern diamondback terrapin
2.1 tiger salamander
1.1 red-sided garter
1.0 anerythristic red-sided garter
1.1 Iowa snow plains garter
1.1 Het butter stripe cornsnake
0.1 anerythristic motley cornsnake
1.1 Blue garter (Puget Sound)

I have been doing this for years with red wigglers. Their castings are great for your plants. Just be careful to harvest the castings. I move everything to one side and put new shredded paper on the clean side. Mist the paper, add some veg scraps, and eventually all the worms will more to the other side. Then you take out all the castings and spread the paper and scraps and start over. The red wigglers reproduce like crazy, but I have never tried it with any other worm.

I have been using a worm chalet for about 2 years. I have some type of small red worm. A friend gave them to me. Supposedly they sell for $25 a pound. They can get fairly large. My adults like them when they are large, my hatchlings like them when they are small.
The chalet has 3 layers. I start w/shred paper then add veg material as available. The worm chalet works along w/my 4 large composting bins. We have lots of veg material. The big bins get layers of avocado/citrus rinds/yard leaves/chicken manure etc and I can be v. selective as to what goes in to the worm chalet.

Currently we are juicing about 20 tangerines a day, so I put them into the big compost piles to avoid burning out my smaller red worms.

The big compost bins constantly get dumps from the worm chalet of new small worms. I throw in the 8' or so inch long big crawlers for the deeper areas.

I have several books. I have had lots of advice. But it ain't brain surgery. The worms eat the leftovers, the turtles eat the worms. To avoid introducing other insects into the hatchling pen I pull the worms out w/a long tweezer and drop them into a cup of water. This cleans off debris. Then I pull them out and store them a plastic tub for use over a couple of days.

Ken remembered that I have lots of avo in compost bins and cautioned against using those worms for the hatchlings. So I don't (Ken seems to be fairly knowledgeable.)

I am glad you brought this subject up. I have been meaning to do so. The worm chalet is remarkably smell free (as long as you dont kill the worms...) and is a great way of composting/feeding turtles.

My chalet was about $125 and has been well worth the cost. It sounds goofy, but it is one of my fav hobbies... whew.

Tomorrow I will take a pix and post it/p
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Patsy

Patsy-
Yes, those are the same type of worms. They are the only ones that respond to such a system. "Regular" earthworms or night crawlers will not survive and reproduce in such a system. I can't imagine they would be bad for the turtles, and would think they would be good.....assuming they are PART of a balanced diet and the worms themselves are getting a good, varied diet.

Finally figured out how to get this pix sized small enough. So this is my worm farm.

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Patsy