Aussie Finch Forum

I was wondering if anyone breeds the little brown mealworms,the fast ones.Just looking for some feed back
as to what successes or failures people have had using these different mealies.Anybody know the correct name and if they are native. Is there a secret to breeding them versus the normal mealies ?

They are not wanted at all in with your breeding Mealworms.
They are carnivorous and love M/W eggs and small baby worms.
If left long enough in a M/W box they will eventually eat out the normal M/Ws.
There is also strong evidence of them invading nest boxes and eating chicks alive.
My advice is leave them well alone.

Thanks Eorix.I have been using them for sometime with out a drama but i will heed the warning.I only started using them as i found species like pictorellas will eat the whole thing rather than just chew the head off.I heard they were carnivorous but not to that extent.I dont breed normal mealworms so im not concerned about that.I generally use termites but the type we have out here arent the same as the ones on the east coast.I have to shift a lot of dirt each week when i have young ones so i was looking for an alternative source of live food.Might have to down the maggot path but i was trying to avoid it. Was it just nest boxes you were refering to or do you think they could invade nests as well ?

I think the beetles you are referring to are the dermestid beetles used in skeletal preparation and are related to the destructive carpet beetle. I do actually breed them but I haven't fed them to anything yet as I'm waiting for something more insectivorours to come along and it's a long wait in this country. I pulled them out of a contaminated bag of chicken stater crumbles that I feed my meal and super worms. I agree with E.orix they are very agressive and you don't want them in your other insect cultures. I don't know if they are preditory enough to kill nestlings but it is something to consider. I leave them to their own devices unlike my meal worms as they are so small it would be too much trouble to pullout pupae and adults and synchonize the life-cyles like I do the other beetles. There are many species and some are native and as for growing them they don't seem to mind the chicken starter crumbles I give my other beetles but they demolish anything solid I put in ther pretty quick. If it's not too stinky I might throw the next dead finch in and see what happens.

Sounds disgusting Greg but good luck witht that.I guess you would have to purge them fairly well before using.I fed mine on Sweet potato and the chats seemed to enjoy them.I never colour fed the chats and they kept good colour so i was wondering if the cartenoids in the sweet potato were enough to maintain colour.It might have been more luck than anything else as there was a lot of other insects entering the aviary.I try and feed mealworms that are active and feeding on carrot/sweet potato,i have often wondered about the nutritional value of a worm from the fridge that hasnt eaten for a week or more.I thought feeding the active well fed worms may be like gut loading them.Hopefully someone can set me straight or add to this comment as im no expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Well the disgusting experiment has concluded. It's unreplicated but from what I've seen I think dermastids are a little like piranha - their killer reputaion is probably over rated. It took 5 days to remove most of the flesh from tossed 2 day old cut-throat (and no I didn't kill it). Most of the tissue loss (observed as shrinkage) is from dehydration but the larvae definitely eat the tissue but I doubt they kill.

Note days 4&5 the substrate & beetles were blown away to show the corpse as high activity was burrying it even though it was placed on 6mm mesh.

Hi From Africa

Just a thought, I make use of dried out Mopane worms that are a local delight for our black folk, these are dried out and then I crush them and place them through a mincer and try and get the particles as small as possible less than 1mm , a coffee bean grinder works the best this is then mixed into the soft food of the finches and fed every second day and then every day when chicks are present.

The reason I make use of this method is that the nearest "live" food is about 80km one way so I came up with this dried out "live" food and I have had great sucess with Masked and Parrots Finches alike, where the other breeders feed ants and termites, a plus for me is that I need only deworm every 4 months and not every 2-3 as the live breeders do...

Thanks

G

I'm sure that the dried mopane worms (is it a moth catapillar?) are a good soource of protein but do the birds take to them as readily as fresh insects? Unfortunately dried insects aren't readily accessable over here or in Australia unless you count blood-worms (midge larvae) from an aquarium shop but they would be prohibitively expensive. I know around the Rift valley lakes in Africa there are huge swarms of midges that the native peoples catch and eat too so that would be another source for you if you hace a contact in Malawi, Kenya,Tanzania or Uganda. I've seen huge swarms in Australia on the Hay plains in the Riverina (choking car radiators and causing them to overheat) and so there may be a silver lining for bird and fish keepers after the floods in eastern Australia. In England I hear them talking about feeding ant eggs to birds but God knows where they find enough. In Laos there is a season where ant eggs become available in large enough quantities to make ant egg soup (http://laovoices.com/2007/02/26/ant-eggs-soup-2/) and I saw wasp larvae sold there too but alas the exotic pinacle of Philippine cuisine is taken by such delights as balout (salted, boiled, embryonated duck egg), bagoon (tiny "fermented" shrimp) and roasted dog!

Peter Mandray in Victoria sells them, about$80 a kg from memory, but it's been a while, some bird love them, others won't touch them. A word of warning but, if you do buy them make sure you are there when they arrive as they will eat through the calico bag.

Can vouch for that one - now get them double back with great success!