A COMPLETE GUIDE TO RAISING MEAL WORMS

A lightly researched but helpful practical handbook for raising meal worms.

This guide springs from Currie’s quarter-century of experience raising meal worms. As it turns out, the squirmy little beasties are not worms at all; in their most common manifestation, they are the larval form of the insect tenebrio molitar, better known as the darkling beetle. According to the author, meal worms are remarkably easy to raise–all it takes is a modest-sized container with smooth, vertical sides, a few handfuls of grain bedding and some basement space far from relatives with queasy stomachs. Once fully developed, meal worms can serve either as bait or as pet food for certain lizards, birds and small mammals. Perhaps the most surprising–and even delightful–thing about Currie’s guide is the author’s own obvious enthusiasm for his diminutive subject. He exudes youthful excitement when he tells his reader of the South American countries in which meal worms are served with rice as food, and he gives a sly wink as he explains that when fishing, meal worms are his own secret weapon. Further, it is with little irony that he describes setting up a starter farm in his study as a “conversation piece.” For all its gusto, however, Currie’s guide is a bit thin on information. For instance, in one chapter on feeding practices, he suggests giving the worms chicken mash, though he admits he doesn’t know what chicken mash is. A later chapter on using meal worms as pet food is only a page long because, as Currie explains, he has not owned many of the animals that supposedly thrive on the nutritious larva.

Currie is unconcerned, however, with his own lapses in knowledge; his book derives almost entirely from his own estimable experience raising meal worms, and he gives his reader no reason to doubt the efficacy of his methods.