2- Prepare the bedding. Instead of soil, composting red worms live in moist newspaper bedding. Like soil, newspaper strips provide air, water, and food for the worms.
These can survive for up to 2 weeks outside the body on underwear, bedding etc. Good hygiene will clear any eggs from the body and the home, and prevent any eggs from being swallowed.
For worm composting, conditions are generally ideal with a carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio of between 20:1 and 35:1. Always remember, you can never add too much worm bedding on top.
Change bed linen, towels and underwear daily for several days after treatment. Bedlinen and clothing should be machine-washed in hot water to ensure that all the eggs are killed.
Pinworm eggs can also be transferred to the fingers from clothing or bedding, and then spread around the home. Eggs may be inhaled from the air or deposited onto food and swallowed. Pinworms can survive up to two weeks on clothing, bedding or other objects, if kept at room temperature.
Always keep the worms and food covered with 2 to 3 inches of damp bedding.
After worms are added, bedding should be kept moist but not soggy and the top 6 to 8 inches turned every 7 to 10 days to keep it loose. About every 6 to 9 months the old bedding should be replaced with properly prepared new bedding. To change bedding, remove the top 5 or 6 inches (where most of the worms are).
For most average sized domestic worm bins, we would suggest you start with 1 lb. (approximately 800 - 1000) mixed sized worms. If the worm bin is larger, or you are composting food scraps for four or more adult persons, we would recommend 2 lbs. of worms.
Worms hate: meat or fish, cheese, butter, greasy food, animal waste, spicy and salty foods, citrus.” The food-to-worm ratio is not precise, nor is the amount of castings they will produce. The rule of thumb is that a pound of worms will eat one to two pounds of food in a week.
Some mattress worms are simply parasitic worms, and will remain in their worm-form their entire life. Some common worms that might appear in your home are pinworms, roundworms, and hookworms. If you see tiny white worms crawling on your bed sheets, they could be any of the following: Bed bugs.
Worm blankets are a necessary part of a worm farm. They are needed to insulate the worm farm; maintaining the temperature and moisture levels inside. A worm blanket can be made from hessian, layers of newspaper, cardboard and even an old cotton towel or sheet.
Wash all sheets, bed linen, pyjamas and sleepwear in hot water to kill any pinworm eggs. Clean toilet seats and potties regularly with disinfectant (remember to store the disinfectant out of reach of children). All family members should take the medication, regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms.
Bed sheets and undergarments: Eggs can spread through contact with contaminated sheets, towels or underwear of infected people. Inhalation: Because the eggs are so tiny, they can travel through the air and inhaled. Once inhaled, they travel through the digestive tract, hatch and lay their own eggs.
The adult worms live in the lower intestine, coming out of the anus at night to lay their eggs.
Take a handful of the compost in your worm farm and give it a good squeeze (remove any worms before you squeeze!). You should be able to just extract a few drops of water. If you can't, then your worm farm may be too dry. Another telltale sign is a reduction in the number of worms in your farm.
Rule #3: Target watering 1-2 times per week. Watering daily or multiple times per week is not normally required. In many cases you can water every week or so - it depends on temperature, humidity, and other factors so monitor the bin and if you see it getting dry give it a good misting or spray.
Worms love to eat coffee grounds, and that's great news for your garden. Add coffee grounds to your compost pile to help attract worms, which help speed up the process of turning food scraps into compost. You can also add coffee grounds directly to the soil, but you'll have to be careful not to overdo it.
Worms are ready to breed once they mature from 50 to 90 days. Earthworms are hermaphrodites; they can be male or female (a great advantage!). They can perform both male and female functions and mate every 7 to 10 days. The mating process takes around 24 hours.
A worm's skin is photosensitive and therefore they need a dark environment. Because worms have no teeth, they need some type of grit in their bedding that they can swallow and use in their gizzard to grind food, much like birds do with small stones.
Where to keep a worm bin… Worm bins can be kept indoors or outdoors in the shade. The ideal temperature for composting earthworms is 55 – 80 degrees F (13 – 27 C). Your earthworms will survive at 32 – 95 degrees F (0 – 35 C) if they have at least 4 inches of bedding and you insulate the bin during colder months.
To remove threadworm eggs and prevent re-infection: Change and wash underwear, nightwear and, if possible bed linen and towels, every day for a few days. A hot water wash, or the heat of an iron, will kill the eggs.
If you see little worms in your bed, they may be carpet beetle larvae, pinworms, clothing moth larvae, flea larvae, or beetle larvae. The helpful news is that bed bugs do not undergo a “worm” stage. So if you see mattress worms, then at least you can rule out bed bugs.
The worms die after about six weeks. Provided that you do not swallow any new eggs, no new worms will grow to replace them. So, if you continue the hygiene measures described above for six weeks, this should break the cycle of re-infection, and clear your gut of threadworms.