Euro Nightcrawlers are not the same as Canadian Nightcrawlers. They are actually a cousin of the red wiggler. They do not grow to the size of the Canadian, but they are a good sized active fishing worm. 2" is quite small for a euro. Are you sure you don't have red wigglers(Eisenia foetida)?

Yeah, seems 2" is pretty small unless you just don't have many breeders.

To fatten up worms (foetida included) you can feed them some grain mixes. I grind them up really fine with a coffee grinder, coat the bed lightly, and the mix is gone by morning. It also brings big ones to the top. If you lift the cover in the middle of the night you will find that you can hardly see the bed through the masses of worms attacking it. Wheat, oat, corn, alfalfa, etc. make good feeds. Some will apply supplements like geritol. Some use ground up dog food. Some ferment the grains by a process involving molasses, which I don't remember fully. Lot's of methods exist for fattening. Just keep in mind you don't want to go overboard. If you know the worms are going toward bait, create a dedicated bin for bait worms and fatten them separately so you don't risk protein poisoning of the whole population. It can be shallower since you will feed from the top only. Also, make sure there is lot's of moisture. The worms will lose weight if the moisture isn't high.

helencolby

I have a mixed worm bin, i.e. Red Wigglers & European Nightcrawlers and it's very easy to identify one from the other. The European worms get up to 7" - that's in a large 4' x 8' x 2' bin though. There's probably about 30 lbs. of each type in the main bin.

HTH

LumpysPal

Thank you. I will take some of my Euros out and put them into a seperate "Bait" box and start feeding them some grain mixes and see how that goes.

Helen

On another forum a fella said that he would feed them a strict diet of fine bread crumbs for a week to fatten them up . These were for sale to fishermen .As I remember it he had them in the sale cup already and just added the bread crumbs .

Some of those grains can be expensive. Anyone ever use deer corn and ground it with a blender?

How many pounds of worms do you have? Any clue?

I feed mine a mix of ground up oatmeal from a blender and cornmeal. I sprinkle it on the top, give it a very very light mist to make it a little soggy (not sure if I even need to do that), cover the top of my bedding with flat dry newspaper, then cover it with my lid (my light stays on all the time). So that encourages the worms to come to the top and feed. They get a lot bigger than you would think.

Are you sure you have euros?

40% oat meal 30% corn meal 30% egg shell