Cover half of your bin about an inch deep, and watch the worms sprint to it.

No, it does not have to be aged. I have fed my worms manure that was only a day or two old. If it is fresh, don't cover the whole bin in case it heats up.

Worms LOVE this stuff. It was my worms' favorite food.

We have a large horse and we clean the paddock daily. The poop, which weighs about 60-70lbs and is "pure" (no bedding) is fed straight and fresh to the worms in my large windrow beds. If you use straight manure, very little heating occurs and the worms LOVE it! It takes my herd about 10 days to make it black and unrecognizable. I have no experience with RM bins, but I would just add a few "apples" at a time.

Determine when your next gift delivery may be and dole out enough to either make it last or use it up before then. I was once lucky enough to steel a single apple and it really seemed to make a big difference in the population. Somebody really know what to get a worm keeper.

After reading this article Horse manure and cow Manure could be questionable.http://hongkongwillieblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/compost-worms.html.
I called several large stables and found that almost 99% wormed each horse every moth. Called most of the dairy farms in the area and they also wormed each animal every month. Also found in both Horse operations and cattle operations meds were rampant because of animal densities. Found in Chickens farms and people raising rabbits same . Manures concern Me. Not only that compost on the commercial market and manures will not pass government standards. most manures available to us come from these large scale operations. New Herbicide Threatens to Contaminate Compost.

DuPont Imprelis,The label clearly states that clippings from treated grass should not be used as mulch or put in a compost pile.
http://blog.missouriorganic.com/news-and-events/new-herbicide-threatens-to-contaminate-compost/

Compost is what we put in,is what we get out.

Bj Greens

"Worm specialist Grobe hopes fear of contamination doesn't dissuade gardeners from making their own compost. "I just tell people that the vermicide wears off," Grobe said. "Probably the best way to increase worms in your yard is to put out a load of manure. Worms need something to eat, and when you see thousands of them thriving out there, you know this stuff isn't harming them.""
~ http://www.santacruzwire.com/index.php/maria-gaura/162-is-horse-manure-safe-for-organic-gardens.html

bjgreenshkw aka Bj Greens

Wern't you banned last month for hawking hongkongwillie?

P.S. For all I know hongkongwillie is a great person and a great place to purchase worms. But then again so are a lot of our other posters who follow the rules and do not post to their personal worm business or those of friends.

Hint: If it sells worms or worm supplies and you or a friend own it, it is a violation of website rules to post a link to it.

Original advice stands. Do not purchase worms from circuses or from places that do not state the latin name of the worm they are selling. In the case of some websites that would be a double whammy.

Yeah, you need to age it a little if you're unsure of worm meds applications to the horses.

I just pile it up for a few days/weeks. If it dries out, a water hose will bring it back to life, if you know what I mean.

It's the only organic material that is perfect for bedding & food.

If you got horse manure, you can't help but have great worm bins.

Chuckiebtoo

Equinox, pardon my ignorance. Its no surprise Gardenweb rules out vendors on forums. Do they have an area for such? And, do they allow people to sell their wares in forums. (Begging not to make me read the TOS - too tired.)

Andre

You are too tired to read the TOS, but not too tired to ask Equinox to read them, summarize them, and post the summary here. Really? If you want to know what is in the TOS, you are going to have to read them.

The bottom line, though, is if you want to promote your wares on this forum, you will have to pay for ad space.

Placing an order tomorrow for approx 10k worms. Cant wait! I have some aged newsprint and horse manure. I just finished placing a 10' x 4' compost pile together (and growing). Should I put worms in there?

On another note: Last week, I received a shipment of rotten veggies. And forgot they were in a large plastic trash can. OK, make that 2 weeks ago. Bad memory. Well those suckers are now far less than 1/2 what they were. I never expected THAT! I know water is the main ingredient in everything but holy moly! That thing shrunk like a, whoa nelly, gotta watch what i say in here. You get the point!

Just worms my friends. In the long run even THEY dont matter!

Andre,
Peachy Clean laundry SVCs
Forest Hills, NY

Put some worms in that compost pile, they will love you and prosper. I get natural redworms in all my compost piles.

If I build an outdoor pit for earthworms (not red wigglers), how long might it be until I have naturally occurring earthworms of a plump size? A year? Less? More?

I've read that I can plump up the big ones in just a week with corn meal and other special feeds. Is that really true?

And then, in winter, should I deeply cover the pile with leaves to give them an opportunity to burrow? I'm sure this has been asked before, but I can't seem to figure out searching this site. My searches rarely work, even on things that I know I've read here before.

If anybody has clues for me to keep in mind on a search, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Louis Pasteur proved more than a century ago that creating an outdoor worm pit will not cause the spontaneous generation of worms. Whatever worms you get will be what were already in the surrounding soil. In my area, the desert southwest, there are few worms in the soil, so an outdoor worm pit would have a difficult time attracting a lot of worms. Those that do migrate to the pit would find conditions there more to their liking than the surrounding dry clay and would be likely to stick around. I have had piles of compost that never attracted worms, but the surrounding dirt was full of night crawlers. Night crawlers are not surface litter dwellers, but they do like to feed on the organic matter that get spilled near the pile. Soil dwelling worms have a hard time migrating through the thick clay in my area.

If you do attract worms, covering the pile in leaves would do two things for you. It will insulate the pile so that the center of the pile would be less likely to freeze, allowing the worms to survive the winter. When the leaves break down the following spring, it will add compost, and therefore food, to the worm pit.

dowbright: You have probably already seen the search hints at: http://search.gardenweb.com/search/help.html You probably already know that if you are searching for as an example red wigglers to put it in quotes such as "red wigglers" that will give returns of only red wigglers articles and not just reds and just wigglers. What article topics are you looking for? Maybe we can help think up just the just the right key words to find that remembered but missing article. It would be nice if the search feature here would just search vermicomposting and not every article on garden web in a group.