Why is this the easiest way possible?

I'm going to show you a mealworm enclosure of a full set up, super easy to make, and how I've not maintained it in one year.

One whole year, no maintenance at all, no sifting, no shaking, no nothing, and this is how we do it.

So about a year ago, we actually did do a full massive series on how to breed your own live food, whether it be Dubia roaches, superworms, mealworms, we've done it all, but I feel my mealworm content isn't as good as my content now, so I've tried to revisit it.

Way back then, a year ago, I decided to think, well what would happen if you didn't maintain it for a year?

What would happen?

Would it work?

And yes, it has.

It's worked so good, it's unbelievable.

However, if you want really good production from your mealworm farm, this is not the way to go.

This isn't as productive as some of the other methods where they've got the grid underneath the boxes, and we've done loads of videos on them in the past.

If you want to see a video on how to breed live food, a full playlist on all the different live food techniques, you're bound to find something that you're going to appreciate.

I'll leave a link just up there, but this is my mealworm farm.

It can often be seen just sat up here on top of my Dubia roach breeding colony, solely for the sole purpose of, it's out the way and it fits on top of that box.

That's it.

There's no added heat, there's absolutely nothing special with that breeding farm, except for it's just full of crap and it works.

Just a 32 litre tub.

What we did a year ago, we've got this total, no lid, nothing.

These beetles can't climb, so you don't need to worry about that.

We literally filled it up to about here with porridge oats.

That's it.

Just filled it up with porridge oats.

We've got two tubs of mealworms just like this.

We got them from the livefoodhub.co.uk, I'll leave their links in the description down below.

I got them from them because you do tend to get a little bit more in their packages.

The animals are just straight from the breeder, so they're already gut loaded, they're ready to go.

They're absolutely amazing.

I'll leave their links in the description down below.

I poured these two tubs into this main tub of just porridge oats.

That's all that was in there, just porridge oats.

This is where it got quite lazy because I just added in some toilet roll inserts.

Do you know when you go to McDonald's, you get a couple of coffees?

I got one of them in there.

Word of warning, if you do do it this way, it does get very, very dusty.

If you've done a lot of research on mealworms in the past, you will know the dust here can cause allergenic, is that a word, allergenics?

Allergenic sort of reactions to your body.

You're going to end up with big eyes and streaming nose, and you're just going to end up with like an allergic reaction to the frazz.

Frazz is the name of their poo.

So if you've got a face mask or anything like that to block the dust getting into you, use it.

We've all got face masks this day and age with COVID, so it does work.

What they basically did, they lived inside the porridge oats, and then they ate the porridge oats as well.

But Richard, how did you give them a moisture source?

A couple of different ways really.

Every now and then, if I was feeding Diego, my bearded dragon, some salad, and I had a little bit left over, I'd chuck it in with these or in with the dubia roaches.

If I fed my big morning gecko breeding colony some pangea, along with the babies and the Chinese house gecko, if I fed them some sort of pangea or crested gecko diet and had a little bit left over, I'd just chuck it in with these.

If my lad had a banana and his banana peel, I'd chuck it in with these.

There was absolutely no maintenance at all.

I just left it in there as more of a recycle sort of bin.

But did it work?

A year later, we've got loads of babies, we've got loads of pupa, we've got loads of beetles, we've got everything in here.

A full mealworm farm.

That's it, it's a full mealworm farm.

It's working perfectly fine.

However, right now, a year later, we put two bags of porridge oats in this.

That's two kilos of porridge oats.

It is just down here now and it's all just frazz.

The joy with that is the babies are actually living in there perfectly fine.

They're eating that, which is nutritionally good for the babies.

It's getting the babies to hide away from the beetles so the babies don't actually get eaten.

Same with the eggs as well.

The eggs are sinking to the bottom of that frazz and they're not getting eaten by any of the beetles.

Like I did say, this is nowhere near as productive as your traditional sort of mealworm farms that you see people go way over the top for.

They do produce more than this and that's solely because the beetles in here can get to the eggs.

They can get to the babies and they just can get to everything.

So it's not as productive, but it works.

If you're a busy person, if you really can't be bothered to sit there sifting through all your mealworm farms, it works.

This is the way forward.

So I've shown you the tub.

Should we have a look deep inside?

You will be shocked at the mess here.

Like I said, a year without maintenance.

So there is dead beetles in here, beetles that have come to the end of their life.

There is loads of exoskeletons, there's loads of sheds, there's loads of just crap in here.

There's loads of little tubs from the Pangaea.

Let's have a look.

Oof.

See what I mean?

Look, there's a beetle just there.

He's loving life, just plodding around, swarming with mealworms.

But like I say, there is a lot of dead beetles in here.

There's a receipt there, I don't know what that's for, but that just goes to show exactly how recyclable we use this.

You can see all these little tubs.

Ah, get off.

They're for the Pangaea that we use, there's another one down here.

Sometimes we've got little tubs in there, that's what we use for our big morning gecko colony.

We've just got loads and loads of stuff in here.

We even tried to put mesh in here, because there's rumour going around that mealworms actually eat plastic.

This is a piece of plastic and it's just something I wanted to try.

It made it brittle, it did make it brittle, but they've not eaten through it.

I suppose if we leave it in there for another year, they might go through it.

Now, is this the best way to keep them?

No, it's not really, is it?

Let's face it, these are still animals, so you could deal with doing them a bit better.

I wonder what it would be like to do a naturalistic set up for Dubia roaches and live food, and the production value behind that.

Well, I might try that.

Subscribe if you want to see something like that.

Check this out, we've just got this through the post.

Northern Exotics YouTube sticker.

Do you know what, I'm going to stick it up there on top of this huge enclosure just here.

Because if you didn't know, Northern Exotics, we actually do have loads of other animals.

That's Popcorn, our Carl Sunglow boa constrictor.

If you saw our last video, we actually fed her, or him, a big guinea pig, and so he's basking away, he's digesting the food.

But where's Hugo?

We've got a big savannah monitor in here, and look, there he is, he's decided to wake up this morning, you lazy git, aren't you?

Oh, he's shedding the blessing.

Right, so while he's waking up, we're going to actually put this sticker up there.

Tell me in the comments if I don't get this level, but I'm just sort of thinking, no tape measure, just sort of get it up there.

If you want to know where this comes from, this comes from The Sweet Bull Shop on Instagram.

And if you've not already, follow us on Instagram, Northern Exotics UK.

And we just peel it off very, very gently.

He has done a few of these for us before in the past, so your Dubia Roach colony sticker, that comes from him.

Oh, here we go.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, stuck on this one just here.

Oh, I'm so excited with little things like this.

This is absolutely amazing.

And why am I sticking my brand on this enclosure?

Quite simply, because this enclosure is always on YouTube, so it would be nice to have a little reminder of what it actually is.

I'm so excited.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So middle of the word YouTube, right on the end is a level with the gap on the glass just there.

And then we just have to really push down every single letter.

Now, let's try and peel the backing off.

Wow.

He also done that one that's behind the plants and on that enclosure just there.

So, yeah, go check him out on Instagram.

Let's get back to the mealworms.

I mean, keeping them like this, they have become a little bit dehydrated.

And why do I say that?

The only way that I knew that happened was we put a full banana skin in here with these and we time-lapsed them.

We'll show it now.

They literally swarmed onto the banana peel and destroyed it in the space of about three hours.

So I would assume that they are a bit dehydrated.

So from this point forward, I'm still going to do it exactly the same.

I'm just going to give them a little bit more moisture source.

So when I do mix up the Pangea for the morning geckos or the crested geckos or whatever, I will mix up that slight little bit more just to chuck in with these.

I will recycle food a bit more in here.

And that's it.

It's only a short video today.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

That was my one year, zero maintenance mealworm farm.