Does anyone know if there is a way to discourage Enc's from laying eggs? We would like for them to lay less eggs in some of our bins. We have plenty of breeder bins and would like to have more bins for getting them to bait size.

Right now we our using peat bedding and grain feeding the worms.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Crowded population may help. They seem to know when to slowdown breeding. Also, fat worms breed less than small worms do. You might try crowding them with fat worms.

Hi williew; To fatten up the redworm and get them as large as possible you have to do a few things. 1. Seperate the largest ones you can harvest out. 2.Put them into new bedding with only a little of the old bedding to keep them from shock from new bedding.3. Feed Oatmeal sprinkled on top od bedding. 4.Lower temp of bedding as close to 55-62 deg F as possible.

You want Europeans to NOT breed? Wow,...I couldn't get ANY babies out of mine. They WERE very crowded, plus I was so fascinated with this new kind of worm that I turned them over and messed around with them every single day! That may be another way to keep them from breeding. Eventually, they all died. I actually have 2 worms inside the house in a container. I started with 6 in my "minibin", and 4 died so far. The room is 75 degrees, so I don't know what killed them. The temps got up to 90 degrees for awhile where I was keeping them outside. Maybe they couldn't take the heat. Never saw one single egg.

I agree with lkittle on droping the temp. if possible.

Kaywood wrote:

QUOTE:
You want Europeans to NOT breed? Wow,...I couldn't get ANY babies out of mine. They WERE very crowded, plus I was so fascinated with this new kind of worm that I turned them over and messed around with them every single day! That may be another way to keep them from breeding. Eventually, they all died. I actually have 2 worms inside the house in a container. I started with 6 in my "minibin", and 4 died so far. The room is 75 degrees, so I don't know what killed them. The temps got up to 90 degrees for awhile where I was keeping them outside. Maybe they couldn't take the heat. Never saw one single egg.

I have never done good with them outside when the temps get high. I have some in the house that are around 75 degrees and they are doing great. These worms are my fishing worms originally started with 393 took alot out for fishing, last count I had 211 mature Euros, 53 juveniles, and 6 cocoons.
I also seen several spent cocoons in there. Lately that have started eating alot more rabbit feed than normal, not sure why though. If I don't put any in then they have a tendency to crawl out but if I have the rabbit feed in there then they stay down in the bedding munching on the feed.
I have also seen on some forums that they like more water than the norm but have found that more water makes these Euros try to escape.