Jealous of all those cocoons, been leaving my heard undisturbed since it has been cold out so I dont really know what they have been up to. Have tipped up the short catch and release compost sifter tray a few times and they are still there though have not spotted any cocoons there and they are moving pretty slow. Since there is only 4" of material over them its just not much insulation, hoping the fellows under the feeding buckets are partying like its 1999. Separating the cocoons does seem interesting and possibly to some advantage like if you wanted to sell them or set someone up with a worm farm of their own. The easier route it seems would be to let them hatch out before using the VC. One of these many threads I saw mention of feeding in an onion mesh sack to draw the new fellows and any stragglers into an easy to extract area. Of course this means another couple of months so longer staging in the process. Equinox, you mentioned a dedicated blender. I had been thinking about one of those large hand crank meat grinders for pre processing feed and also for running comfrey leaves through. I did some comfrey earlier this year on my kitchenaide grinder and it made nice loose pellets that ended up spread as mulch. Been looking for a big hand crank one to leave out in the garden so preferably stainless steel. If it ends up getting used enough would be a simple matter to put a motor on it. Might not reduce scraps as finely as a blender but well enough for the wormies and would quite likely last forever.

eaglesgarden: unless you are going to keep them indoors, I'd skip the cocoons this year. They'll hatch in your outdoor bin, but they probably won't mature before the first freeze. Even if you take measures to insulate and feed your outdoor bin over the winter, I think starting with a pound of worms now will give you better results. There are reliable worm sellers offering worms for $32-35 per pound including shipping. One farm offers a half pound starter pack of bed run worms for $20 shipped, but I'm not familiar enough with them to know if they are reliable. Have you checked craigslist and freecycle for a local source? Do you know anyone who has an old compost pile or owns horses? The bottom of an old pile of manure is almost sure to have red wigglers. I'm not familiar with the worm farm you mention. I like that they ship the cocoons with a fair amount of vermicompost. Their list of advantages to starting with cocoons is reasonable. The drawback is time. Andrew

Bruce, newbie314, It's not really a secret at all. The theory is rather simple and common sense but it does however take some time to get used to.... Basically, it all has to do with timing and removal of worms. Also, your main goal would be to harvest "worms" and not castings. What I used to do was start a new bin, then let it process for 3 to 4 months and then dump the entire contents including worms and castings. I would then sort out the worms from the finished castings but when I weighed my harvested worms, there would always be the same biomass as when I started. No matter how I devised schemes to split my bins up the same things always happened. However, I did obtain some pretty good vermicompost. Instead of waiting for a bin to process for three to four months as described above, the technique is to remove "some" of your worms about every 30 days or so and place them into a new bin. By removing worms on a continous basis ( every 30 days or so), the worms will never reach their max population for the bin. Also, you want to remove some of the castings each time you remove some of the worms. I have been told that the castings building up is what is responsible for the worms not reproducing too fast. You will have to ask Kelly about that but I only know it works, so here is what I have been doing as suggested by others and it works really good... I start a vermicompost bin and care for it just like normal. However, after about 6 weeks (not months) when you first notice castings starting to appear at the top of the bedding (still lots of unproccessed material), then it is time to harvest "some" of the worms. To do this I attract the worms to the top of the bedding by placing some food on "top" of the bedding surface. After a couple of days, a large number of the worms will be attracted to the top of the bin where the food is at. Then, simply take the top 4 inches of the bedding (worms and all) and remove it from the bin. At this point in time, you have removed a large portion of your worms from the bin, but you really do not want to remove too many. Replace about 1/2 - 3/4 of them back into the old bin. All as your trying to do is to remove a small portion of your worms (maybe 20% or so) and place them into a new bin.. Also, in addition to the 4 inches of bedding and worms that I remove, I also remove a couple more inches of vermicompost. So all together, I have removed about 6 inches of vermicompost/bedding from the original bin. You need to replace this right away with new fresh bedding material. You can start a new bin with the few worms (and vermicompost) that you have removed from the original bin. Then, every 30 days, remove some more worms from the original bin and throw them into the second bin that you have already started. Make sure you also remove some of the vermicompost. So, if you remove some worms every 30 days, and if you make sure that you also remove about 6 inches of castings (or vermicompost) then your worms should multiply good. This takes experience to get the hang of because if you remove too many worms from the original bin, then breeding will be slow. Also, you cannot remove just worms but you must also remove some vermicompost and replace it with fresh bedding. I don't know the exact mechanism behind why this works I only know it works for me. I have been told by others who use similar techniques that as the castings build up then the worms do not breed as much. If I am incorrect about why certain things happen here, then you will have to excuse me but I have only propogated what I have been told. Kelly will hopefully correct this if any of the facts are bunk. I only know that this technique works because I have been using it for some time now and it doesn't take long before you will be operating lots of bins. I had so many bins that I eventually had to start some outside systems and it happened in short order. By adding new bedding every 30 days when you remove some of the worms and bedding, you are sort of "diluting" the ratio of castings to brown bedding material. If you do not remove some of the castings then each time you remove some of the worms, it really will not do you much good because the worms will slow down in breeding from the castings building up. So, the two important factors are to remove some of your worms every 30 days and also to remove some of the castings every 30 days as well (at the same time). In addition to the original bin, you have started a second bin with a few worms in it. You will be adding to this bin every 30 days with a few worms from the original bin. Once you start to see castings building up in this bin, then you can do the same thing to it that you did with the original bin. You can start a third bin. Another important thing to know, is that in the original bin, you should do a total harvest of castings after 6 months or so. You will be taking worms out of it every 30 days but after about 6 months the castings towards the bottom half of the bin will be processed a great deal. I hope I explained this well enough but if not I will try again, just let me know what you may be foggy on or don't quite understand. Darryl

Thanks Vagas and Tclynx. I had the cocoons in a plastic bag w/o air or food. Just worm doo and cocoons which aren't that recognizable to me yet. I could not imagine leaving them in the plastic bag vagas, so I prepared a bed of peat moss/a couple cups of cornmeal/ and a couple cups of wellllll rotted bagged cow manure that has been laying out in the weather for about 3 years/and a few handfuls of small shredded paper to break up all that dirt looking stuff. Well Mixed and damp. I poured the plastic bag of worm cocoons out onto this mixture in the bin and covered it with a layer of dry shredded paper. I did put some drain holes in the bottom, and I did put another container w/o holes under that to capture any liquid excess or baby worms that might fall through and of course the brick to keep the upper plastic container from falling down below the air holes. And I did put a soaked piece of cardboard box down in my bin to cover the holes for the babies to lay on,first thing. I did that about 3 days ago with the cocoons and I don't see any babies yet, but since I am still afraid I will damage them if I put my hands down in the mixture to look, that doesn't mean they aren't there, I'm sure. In the meantime, I am down to opening and looking at the worms only about 3 times a day and that IS a struggle for me. I put the 3 containers together like Vaga said. The worms are awfully skinny and aren't moving too fast just yet. It has been only about a week and a half since I put them(1000) in there and NOW I can see that they are eating the bedding up and pretty quickly. So, Friday, I set the second prepared container that makes the tiered bin on top of that W/Oa brick (The worms around outside are all laying under heavy stuff so I figured the small weight of the container could be helpful) and I put about 1/2 lb or less of kitchen scraps and coffee grounds and of course shredded paper in it in case they wanted more to eat. They really are skinny. I have never seen such skinny little worms. I am sure they must grow (red wigglers)bigger. Anyway, Today when I looked at them, I DID find that they are migrating up into the food...or at least about 20 of them have so far. Out of fear that they would attempt to escape and inadvertantly commit suicide, I placed the whole 3 layer bin in a large black garbage bag leaving it open and loose in case they try to explore outside the box while I am gone. That way, I won't find them dried up on the floor or step on them. Once I saw that they weren't trying to get away, I took the bin out of the bag. Not one fatality due to escape...not one worm in the bag either. =o) So, I am learning not to sit and prowl through their bedding to see what they are doing.....all the time. Just nervous about them I guess. Trial and error is the way of life, I suppose. I will either get more worms, or they will not do well for me. Thanks so much for your input. It helps to know that you guys are out there willing to share the information with me. =o)