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just stayed in the box in the bed of Hi Susann and Gayle, Thanks for the info on how to feed live larvae of mealworms (or probably anything larval) to special birds, at freezing temperatures. I'm not equipped to provide heat on a regular basis, but suppose I could improvise with a container of hot water as suggested. The old light bulbs under a presumably false floor sounds an ingenious solution that I might consider. My problem is that the downys, occasional hairys and flickers, and chickadees do quite well already on hanging suet logs (~3:1 suet to peanut butter), while I only breed the fly larvae about every 5 weeks, a long time to wait for an oriole, and a rather smelly operation near the end to boot. The larvae out-compete bacteria initially on fresh liver, but eventually it reverses on the partly eaten smelly older pieces of liver as you put fresh liver in. If you adopt the approach that allegedly sometimes works with children -- eat your dinner all up or you can't have any more -- you end up with small larvae that make small pupae, from which small adults have difficulty in emerging. Unless you run a huge continuous operation like that I knew years ago at CSIRO in Canberra for sheep blowflies, Lucilia cuprina, you are pretty much forced to do episodic breeding where the stages are more or less synchronized: in a typical batch, the final instar larvae will turn into 'wanderers' over ~2 days, and the adults will all emerge over only 2 mornings about a week and a half later (depends on ambient temperature). Another thing about these fly larvae is that they can climb up any surface even glass at the wanderer stage and escape if their skin is at all wet, so you need a Fort Knox arrangement with dry sawdust to keep them all in -- a bit of rain and you've had it. You can delay a batch of these larvae in sawdust in a container with air-holes in the fridge for a week at 4-5° and most will survive to adult emergence after you warm them up again, but even 2 weeks is pushing it with much lower percentage success, and at 3 weeks you get close to zero. So 'batching' them in the fridge to avoid having to breed so often is not very useful. I think mealworm beetles are like cockroaches in breeding continuously and asynchronously -- I also have a colony of Periplaneta with all stages present at any one time, which makes them easier to maintain if you just supply food and water fairly regularly, though roaches can survive for very long periods without either. With these adult flies, less than 2 days deprived of either water or of sugar will be fatal to the entire colony. Cheers, Steve ________________________________________ From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] on behalf of GayleMacLean [duartess@EastLink.ca] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 5:19 AM To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Oriole Flock, Halifax -> mealworms Hi Steve, I over-wintered an Orange-crowned Warbler in my backyard here in Dartmouth from November until early in May of the following year feeding it homemade 'bird' plumb pudding, suet cakes but mostly live meal worms. I did as Susann described, present the live meal worms on top of a small tupperwear container filled with hot water on a small wicker hanging tray close to where the warbler had its hidey hole in an old tree at the same time every day, just after sunrise and just before sunset, so not to have competition from (mostly) Black-capped Chickadees. It refused to eat the canned mealworms that you can get at pet stores. It wanted to capture the wiggly ones. It would wait for me every single day, making its chipping sounds, demanding its dinner! Susann also provided me with some adult mealworms to start my own farm which was very helpful. I kept them in a kitty-litter box down in the basement by our furnace. The adults just stayed in the box in the bed of oat bran & I fed them carrots, potatoes and used damp used teabags. I covered the tray with an old screen from a window. Worked like a charm! I also, thanks to Susann, attempted, but with much less success, to over winter several Baltimore Orioles but the competition from the Starlings was just too great, despite having several Oriole cages that Susann also, lent to me. Sincerely, Gayle MacLean Dartmouth On 01/13/15 11:17 PM, Susann Myers <myerss@eastlink.ca> wrote: Hi, Steve. Yes, these are live mealworms. As soon as orioles appear at my feeders, generally in November, I work on getting them used to a regular feeding schedule, partly to avoid conflicts with starlings. The orioles are waiting to pounce at feeding time and, as you suggest, the mealworms are not exposed to cold temperatures for more than a couple of minutes. I provide them to the birds in clay saucers, which I bring in to warm up between feedings - it would seem too much like mealworm torture, otherwise. If I want to leave mealworms out for longer periods, I put them in my large bird-feeding cage, which has a heated floor - the heater is a string of "old-fashioned" outdoor Christmas lights. I've heard of others in the past providing mealworms in a saucer on top of a container of hot water, for instance for a warbler that was going to pop into a concealed feeding station occasionally through the day. I raise some mealworms myself, in colonies with all stages including the beetles, and friends have been supplying me with welcome additions this winter. But I also buy some - have just placed an order with SuperCricket in Saskatchewan, which has been a reliable supplier in the past. Don Codling in Sackville has developed an awesome system for raising mealworms, and storing them in the refrigerator in cold-arrest. I'm much less disciplined. If you'd ever like to contribute blowfly larvae to a worthy cause, the orioles would be delighted! Cheers, Susann -------------------------------------------------- From: "Stephen Shaw" <srshaw@Dal.Ca> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:24 PM To: <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca> Subject: RE: [NatureNS] Oriole Flock, Halifax -> mealworms >Are the mealworms live (presumably)? If so, how do you prevent them from freezing together and to the container into a hard solid mass, within a couple of minutes at these temperatures? If alternatively they are dead/individually frozen already, I can see how they would stay as separate objects, but I thought that they'd then be less attractive to birds if immobile and not wriggling. Or are your birds so well experienced that they are waiting for you to put out the larvae so they pounce immediately? >I periodically breed fly larvae on liver (of big blowflies, Calliphora) and this afternoon I had raised far too many, so put half of them out in an open container. These froze almost immediately as expected, as above -- I had no expectant birds waiting, though. >So it would be nice to know how you or others deliver these mealworms, dead or alive? >And who sells them, or do you raise them yourself and not let them go through all the way to adult beetles, using cold-arrest? I don't know much about rearing them. >Steve (Halifax) >________________________________________ >From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] on behalf of Susann Myers [myerss@eastlink.ca] >Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 8:02 PM >To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca; Ns-Rba@Yahoogroups.Com >Subject: [NatureNS] Oriole Flock, Halifax > >The number of Baltimore Orioles tending my feeders in Halifax grew from 7 to 9 in mid-December. All 9 are still doing well, eating large amounts of grape jelly, peanut butter "suet" and mealworms. > >There are another 2 orioles tending feeders (including Patricia Chalmers') on Elm Street, about 4 blocks from mine. > >Susann Myers >
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