Posted on Leave a comment

5 Reasons to NOT Throw out Your Christmas Tree!!

In a couple of days, millions of Christians will throw out their live Christmas trees.  This usually happens on New Year’s Day.  Instead, put that tree to good use.

  1. christmas tree
    Christmas Tree
  1.  Pine needles are devoured by Spanish Isopods so save those needles and get yourself some Spanish Isopods like Porcellio Ornatus, Porcellio Hoffmanseggi or Porcellio Magnificus and feed them some needles.
  2.  Chip that tree up, age it a bit and use the mulch for worm bedding, Isopod substrate or substrate for many roaches that love rotting wood like Surinam Roaches, and Zebra Roaches.
    Zebra Roaches

    Surinam Roaches
  3.  Cut the tree up and place the logs on the ground outside and attract wild Isopods like oniscus asellus (Skirted Isopods), Porcellio Scaber (Rough Isopods) and Wood Roaches.
  4.  Cut the tree trunk into 2″ disks and place in your Isopod and Roach enclosures to provide them places to hide.
  5.  If you live in an area where burning is permitted, then burn the leftover trimmings and use the potash as a fertilizer in your garden soil.  Mix it with worm castings and give your plants a boost.

Do you have other uses that you can think of for Christmas trees?  If so, Please post them below!

Posted on Leave a comment

Working on Curly-Wing Flies

We are working on breeding Curly-wing flies and bought the domain name “curlywingflies.com”.  We are in our 8th generation.  We are going to go to 15 generations before we put these up for sale.

Curly-wing flies are flightless houseflies.  We have found a way to breed these on a vegetable based diet, which was not easy, but it has lessened the smell in the breeding and larvae rooms.

We plan on shipping these in cups or in mesh or burlap bags.  We will not ship the larvae or live adult flies, but we will ship the cocoon in its dormant form before it becomes a fly.

The pictures below of are closeups that I took last week.  They can’t fly because their wings are curled.

These flightless houseflies are the same size as normal house flies.  Zero chemicals or drugs are used to create the curly wings.  The curl was created using a curling iron and hairspray.  What a pain in the next curling the wings of thousands of houseflies with one little curling iron.  🙂

Kidding.  The curl was achieved through selective breeding over a long period of time so that these would breed true.  Every once in a while we end up with a curly-wing fly that can fly or sort of fly, but we remove those flys from our cultures so that those flies with the strongest wing curl, which keeps them from flying, only get to breed in our facility.

Our curly-wing flies are Musca domestica, which is exactly the same fly that visits your house and is a pain during picnics.  Ours cannot fly so it makes them easy to control, feed to your reptiles and pets and to hamper escapes.

We are working on a great deal for you.  We are planning our go-live sale and we will have informative care videos, information and fly pupae for sale.  We will also have food for sale so that you can care for your flies when they are delivered.

These are common houseflies that are flightless and they cannot be raised like flightless fruit flies.  They have different habits and needs.  If you raise them like Melanogaster or Hydei flightless fruit flies, they will die.

Sign up for an email when we go live.  Once we start selling Curly-wing flies, we will provide:

  1.  A list of supplies that you will need, with links to those supplies, even if we do not carry them.
  2. Feeding and care information in the form of videos with written instructions.
  3. A link to our proprietary blend of food, made with our secret recipe.  Heck, I will even throw in the recipe.  We keep no secrets here.  Proprietary, shmoprietary!
  4. Of course, a link to our sale, which will be a great value.

 

Posted on Leave a comment

Worm Man’s Blog!

Welcome to our new blog.  We used to have a blog and a forum back a few years ago, and it was hacked and we never rebuilt it.  We are giving it a go again, and this time we are using world-class security and regular backups.

I am not sure if we will be adding a forum or not.  Let’s see how this goes.  If you guys think we need a forum then I will have one built.  Please interact, ask questions and let us know your thoughts.  We are here for you.