Overproducing Hornedworms, any ideas?!

[Randers88]

It turns out that the girlfriend and I were a bit too successful at self sustaining a horned worm population. Nine hawk moths with about twenty more coming any day.
With these amounts, we surely don’t have as much repashy as we’d need to sustain all of the worms once the first round of food cups are eaten.
If anybody in the Tampa Bay Area needs horned worms and would like to take some off our hands in about a week, please feel free to reach out to me as I definitely don’t have enough animals to eat them all.
If anybody has any recommendations for food for them, aside from repashy... please let me know.

 

[GoodKarma19]

I know there are some "homemade" recipes out there, but the ingredients are fairly pricey! I'm afraid I'm no help... but I'll bump this thread haha! @snitz427, you've done some hornworm breeding - do you have any alternative chows?

 

[snitz427]

I didnt have much luck wirh repashy. They dont seem to like it, it smells, and it molds quickly. I ordered some chow from rainbowmealworms.com but havent had a chance to try it yet. The hornworms I get from them always have good chow that stays relatively fresh, so i am hopeful!

If your cham is an adult you can feed off the moths. They will like them. I had 6 hawkmoths and got about 400 eggs overnight. 400!! Feed them off before its too late lol

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Excellent pan fried, crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside!

 

[snitz427]

Excellent pan fried, crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside!

Man ya’ll deep fry everything down there!

 

[jannb]

We use the hornworm food from Great Lakes Hornworms. You can buy it already made or just get the powder and make it yourself.

 

[Randers88]

I didnt have much luck wirh repashy. They dont seem to like it, it smells, and it molds quickly. I ordered some chow from rainbowmealworms.com but havent had a chance to try it yet. The hornworms I get from them always have good chow that stays relatively fresh, so i am hopeful!

If your cham is an adult you can feed off the moths. They will like them. I had 6 hawkmoths and got about 400 eggs overnight. 400!! Feed them off before its too late lol

My boys refuse to eat the moths unfortunately and my females just get pissed . I haven't had any issues with repashy in the past, except for the fact that my worms go through it all before all of our cham's can eat them.

Man ya’ll deep fry everything down there!

Yes.... Yes we do! If it's not deep fried.... is it even cooked?!

 

[CamoChameleonsHuman]

Try and sell them to a local pet store and or get in store credit for them.

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Man ya’ll deep fry everything down there!

Cajuns cook! Kind of have to when your brought up with frog legs instead of drum sticks!

 

[Brodybreaux25]

Wait, So y’all weren’t raised with this book?

 

[kinyonga]

The book is awesome...but the movie was better!

 

[snitz427]

Cajuns cook! Kind of have to when your brought up with frog legs instead of drum sticks!

We cook up here too. Stove top, Mac n’ Cheese, tater tots... you know, the good stuff.

 

[Hashtag ChamLife]

It turns out that the girlfriend and I were a bit too successful at self sustaining a horned worm population. Nine hawk moths with about twenty more coming any day.
With these amounts, we surely don’t have as much repashy as we’d need to sustain all of the worms once the first round of food cups are eaten.
If anybody in the Tampa Bay Area needs horned worms and would like to take some off our hands in about a week, please feel free to reach out to me as I definitely don’t have enough animals to eat them all.
If anybody has any recommendations for food for them, aside from repashy... please let me know.

I live in the area, Land O' Lakes technically. Oddly enough, I too am raising my own hornworms and silkworms. I haven't gotten moths yet, but I'm expecting them any minute.
Someone mentioned trying to sell them to a local shop for "store credit", but unless you know someone who's an owner, that's not worth your time - I've tried to do it in the past with both silk and hornworms.

Have you tried putting any of the eggs away in the fridge?
You can also slow down or speed up their growth/hatch rates with humidity and temps. (And you can actually put the worms themselves in a fridge every other day for a while before it messes with them)

All that being said, because I'm waiting for the worms [great song], I haven't had any hornworms in about 2-3 weeks for my guys and gals. If you're just trying to get rid of some I can take a few... otherwise you can attempt to sell them under the classifieds on this forum.
I also know that places like "Pinellas county Reptiles", the chain pet shops like petco, pet supplies plus, and pet city are really strange when it comes to the feeders. I basically got laughed at in a few places trying to even GIVE them silkworms for free.

I've got 8 worm eaters... one of which will handle the biggest and baddest. I've given my beardie girl some of the biggest worms I've seen. She literally will do flips jumping at the tongs/worm, it's great fun!

Glad to see I'm not the only one in town!

P.s. I no longer deal with the "local shops" after quite a few issues. The only 2 shops I will even go to any more are Pinellas Reptiles and Fins and Skins over in the Brandon area. When I do go to those stores it usually due to needing something NOW. If you need any roaches let me know... I know people ; )


Edit: I use Mulberry Farms for both silk and horn chow. It's worked for me and that's where I've gotten my silkworm eggs. However, I've been experiencing some issues with hatch rates on their eggs and their customer service seems to be kinda lacking... but they have a decent product otherwise. I wasn't able to get my "store bought" silkworms to spin a cocoon, but I have about 30 after the first gen of eggs from them.

 

[Randers88]

I live in the area, Land O' Lakes technically. Oddly enough, I too am raising my own hornworms and silkworms. I haven't gotten moths yet, but I'm expecting them any minute.
Someone mentioned trying to sell them to a local shop for "store credit", but unless you know someone who's an owner, that's not worth your time - I've tried to do it in the past with both silk and hornworms.

Have you tried putting any of the eggs away in the fridge?
You can also slow down or speed up their growth/hatch rates with humidity and temps. (And you can actually put the worms themselves in a fridge every other day for a while before it messes with them)

All that being said, because I'm waiting for the worms [great song], I haven't had any hornworms in about 2-3 weeks for my guys and gals. If you're just trying to get rid of some I can take a few... otherwise you can attempt to sell them under the classifieds on this forum.
I also know that places like "Pinellas county Reptiles", the chain pet shops like petco, pet supplies plus, and pet city are really strange when it comes to the feeders. I basically got laughed at in a few places trying to even GIVE them silkworms for free.

I've got 8 worm eaters... one of which will handle the biggest and baddest. I've given my beardie girl some of the biggest worms I've seen. She literally will do flips jumping at the tongs/worm, it's great fun!

Glad to see I'm not the only one in town!

P.s. I no longer deal with the "local shops" after quite a few issues. The only 2 shops I will even go to any more are Pinellas Reptiles and Fins and Skins over in the Brandon area. When I do go to those stores it usually due to needing something NOW. If you need any roaches let me know... I know people ; )


Edit: I use Mulberry Farms for both silk and horn chow. It's worked for me and that's where I've gotten my silkworm eggs. However, I've been experiencing some issues with hatch rates on their eggs and their customer service seems to be kinda lacking... but they have a decent product otherwise. I wasn't able to get my "store bought" silkworms to spin a cocoon, but I have about 30 after the first gen of eggs from them.

As far as maintaining goes, I’ll probably just try to put half the eggs in the fridge to see how they hold up. Knowing the cycle, I won’t have any eggs for about another week.
There is a shop that I go to that would probably take some but it’s doubtful that I would get any store credit for them.
As far as silks go, I’ve had them cocoon into moths and mate but never had any luck with making eggs.
Perhaps you’d be interested in a trade hornedworms for roaches?! I haven’t had any luck getting any small roaches, I can only find large discoids... which seem to scare the crap out of all four Chams and my beardie shows no interest in them.
We live in Trinity.

 

[Hashtag ChamLife]

As far as maintaining goes, I’ll probably just try to put half the eggs in the fridge to see how they hold up. Knowing the cycle, I won’t have any eggs for about another week.
There is a shop that I go to that would probably take some but it’s doubtful that I would get any store credit for them.
As far as silks go, I’ve had them cocoon into moths and mate but never had any luck with making eggs.
Perhaps you’d be interested in a trade hornedworms for roaches?! I haven’t had any luck getting any small roaches, I can only find large discoids... which seem to scare the crap out of all four Chams and my beardie shows no interest in them.
We live in Trinity.

I'm building a "Grain and Berry" in a new shopping center there at little road and 54. Trinity area is about 10-30 minutes away, so that's convenient.
Yea. Roaches in this city are brutally hard to come by. However if it's small you want... that's about the only size you can reliably get. I've got about 600 discoids, from small to winged. If you want to try a few to see if you can feed them off let me know specifically what size you want.

I have silks too, but have had absolutely horrible hatch rates in the last 3000 eggs or so. So right now I only have about 3-500 and they're small to maybe medium.

I have eggs from a mating pair I'm waiting to hatch as well as 2 mantis ooths.

Let me know what you need and I'll see what I can do!

 

[Randers88]

I'm building a "Grain and Berry" in a new shopping center there at little road and 54. Trinity area is about 10-30 minutes away, so that's convenient.
Yea. Roaches in this city are brutally hard to come by. However if it's small you want... that's about the only size you can reliably get. I've got about 600 discoids, from small to winged. If you want to try a few to see if you can feed them off let me know specifically what size you want.

I have silks too, but have had absolutely horrible hatch rates in the last 3000 eggs or so. So right now I only have about 3-500 and they're small to maybe medium.

I have eggs from a mating pair I'm waiting to hatch as well as 2 mantis ooths.

Let me know what you need and I'll see what I can do!

I’m definitely interested in getting some small discoids to try out with our babies. I’m good with Silks for now.

 

[Hashtag ChamLife]

Here a shot of my bin. I'm pointing to what I'd consider to be small. I should have plenty of them, I'll just have to dig them out. That big guy with wings is probably 2" or so, the one I'm pointing to is fingernail size (1/4-3/8"). The size I use most are about 1/2-3/4".

In my bin I use a thin layer of top soil/sand mix, sycamore leaves and a few pieces of cork bark. I have springtails, powder blue and powder orange isopods in there. For gutload I use random veg scraps as well as Rephasy bug burger [I add their SuperPig to my bug burger gutload - contains carotenoids and such].

 

[Reptofreak]

Wait, So y’all weren’t raised with this book?
View attachment 249528

It’s been many moons seance I’ve seen this book lmao!

 

[Randers88]

Here a shot of my bin. I'm pointing to what I'd consider to be small. I should have plenty of them, I'll just have to dig them out. That big guy with wings is probably 2" or so, the one I'm pointing to is fingernail size (1/4-3/8"). The size I use most are about 1/2-3/4".

In my bin I use a thin layer of top soil/sand mix, sycamore leaves and a few pieces of cork bark. I have springtails, powder blue and powder orange isopods in there. For gutload I use random veg scraps as well as Rephasy bug burger [I add their SuperPig to my bug burger gutload - contains carotenoids and such].

View attachment 249608

Nice! The 1/4-3/8, 1/2" sizes would be good for us, I'm sure. It seems like you have a nice colony going by the sound of it.

 

[Hashtag ChamLife]

Nice! The 1/4-3/8, 1/2" sizes would be good for us, I'm sure. It seems like you have a nice colony going by the sound of it.

Actually, the only reason I have such a colony is for this exact reason. I've had a hell of a time getting roaches anywhere within 2 hours of my house. All I can find is the occasional "small" which is really extra small. I ended up having to drive a ways to get quality roaches so I just bought a boatload. I figured worst case scenario, I could always sell them. But mostly if anyone in my area was having the same issue, there's options.
I try to keep as many bugs as I can. I'm actually working on some green bananas now, as well as mantids and phasmids. The stick are a LOT harder to find however, luckily I have a few eggs to start with.

Florida is a gift and a curse. I can walk 10 minutes from my house and find hoppers, katudids, surinam, weevils, moths, etc. The problem is when you have 8 or 10 lizards I'd rather get a colony established. Trying to get stick/leaf bugs shipped here, even the legal species, is a nightmare. This is why I have so many bugs... and try to get my hands on things I don't have.

I'll shoot you a private message as to not broadcast our location to the internet's- outside of what we already have.