What To Feed Earthworms
What type of food waste should you use in feeding earthworms? Remember that, not all type of food waste are suitable, infact some can be dangerous and can kill your worms. So, before you start feeding your worm, you need to segregate your food waste into what is suitable as worm food.
You can feed your worms with vegetable peelings and fruit scraps, tea bags and coffee grounds, green leaves, cereal, bread, hair, vacuum cleaner dust, damp cardboard,paper, egg cartons and pizza boxes. Avoid boxes which has colour print on them as this may be toxic and dangerous to your worms.
Eventhough earthworm don’t have bones in their body, they however need calcium and you can feed them with crushed egg shells in tiny bits. This would also help in keeping the worm bin from getting too acidic.
Worms do not like acidic foods so please don’t feed them with lemons, oranges, pineapples, pickles and onions. This food will drive them away! They also don’t like spicy and salty food such as chilly, curry, salt, garlic. Do not feed them meat,fish and fat or you might end up breeding maggots too. And it could also attract flies.
Avoid feeding them with dairy products such as milk, yogurt, butter, cheese and eggs. Be careful not to feed them with any poisonous plants or weeds or grass (heats up and release ammonia). Animal manure from chicken also not suitable as it contains ammonia. Cat and dog faeces also not recommended as they might contain some chemical elements which was taken in as medicine to cure any disease that the cat or dog might have.
Animal manure that are suitable is horse and cow manure, particularly if you are breeding worm for commercial composting where you can obtain a large quantity of them in the farm or village area.
If you cut the food waste into smaller quantities and then feed the worm, the worms will digest the waste speedier and faster. You will notice that the worms can eat the amount of food waste equivalent to approximately half their body weight. For example if you have earthworm weighing about 500 gram, they can eat food waste about 250 gram daily!
But please do not over fed the worms. The worms may not eat fast enough and this can result in a foul smell coming from your worm bin. If that is the case, you may need to remove the rotting food waste from the worm bin. Only add a new food when almost all food is eaten.
