Whatbird.com

I been reading up on mealworms, and the sites claim it's easy, but it sounds like a lot of work to me. There is a bucket, some oat bran, worms in the deal that reproduce.

 I can't see my wife allowing a bucket of worms in the house.

 I was curious if anyone here has tried it, and how it turned out for them. I thought of trying something outside, in the shade, grow them out there, and have some kind of shoot where they can craw out and get eaten, but the site I went to said heat will kill them, and it gets around a 100 here in the summer time, so I think it would have to be an indoor thing.

Whidden,

I wimped out and have tried the freeze-dried mealworm approach. Raising and herding live worms would have been the end of my marriage as we know it.

The jury is still out on the freezed-dried. I've tried putting them on the tray at the base of a tube feeder, and it seems like the titmice are the only birds to figure out what they are and how good they are. The cardinals, chickadees, goldfinches have ignored them so far. I *think* I saw the nuthatch eating them, but I wasn't close enough to be sure.

I also tried mixing some in with the black oil sunflower seed in the hopper feeder, but I couldn't see if they were getting eaten or flung.

On Thursday, I tried melting down some store-bought suet and mixing in a whole bunch more mealworms. The downys seem to like it, but then, they were perfectly content with the suet out of the package. Can't tell if this has been a big win.

I'm waiting to see if the other birds take more of an interest during breeding season. Bottom line: so far, I've got some happy titmice for my efforts. Stay tuned.
 

That's hilarious. I see I'm not the only one who has an Anti-Worm spouse.

 

I'm thinking about going for it, but just keeping the bucket outside and not telling her what it is. Be one heck of a shock if she goes out and lifts the lid though.

I recently used a $25 free Garden's Alive coupon, & purchased a  grub feeder.  It is called a "Clinger's Only" Bird feeder  because it feeds small songbirds only:  Chickadees, Titmouse, Nuthatches, Finches.  Larger birds like Starlings, Grackles, Pigeons, etc. can not use it.  Unfortunately, the roasted meal worms I purchased with it were on backorder.  So here I was with this lovely feeder, but no grub.  I went to the store & purchased some wax worms & meal worms.  The chickadees ate all the wax worms first, then someone else cleaned out all the meal worms.  But, I never caught which bird it was.

I would imagine growing some in a cool garage or basement would work well, but I've never done it myself.   

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"So many sparrows, so little time!"

I feel motivated, but I'v never done it before, so I keep putting it off.