How To Ship Worms

Posted on Apr 16 2010 - 3:49am by Mike Lieberman

Categorized as

Composting

3817

When I decided to move to Los Angeles, one of my concerns was figuring out the best way to ship my worms.

Well, I figured it out and the worms safely made it. I had a pound of worms and filled up 4 plastic containers that were checked along with my luggage.

Here’s how I packaged and shipped them:

Lined the bottom of a large coffee container with shredded newspaper.
Piled worms and whatever else was in the bin in the container on top of the newspaper.
Added food scraps on top and covered with a sheet of moist newspaper.
Put lid on the container and securely taped up with duct tape.

As soon as I got home, I unpacked the worms. They were all nearly at the top of the container, but alive. I put some fresh bedding in the worm bin and dumped them back in along with some fresh food scraps.

Check out the journey of my worms from Brooklyn to Los Angeles:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPfSLlztMWs

11 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

Matti April 16, 2010 at 3:09 pm -

Great job on moving the worms. They will be happy in Southern CA. Matti
Mike Lieberman April 16, 2010 at 3:41 pm -

I hope so because the ones that I had in NYC weren't very happy. They kept dying.
Melissa April 16, 2010 at 6:43 pm -

Great job! You'll have a great time in LA.
itu... April 16, 2010 at 8:09 pm -

hey mike its itu.. i have a thought about composting. especially worm composting. i know that paper and all that would be good for the worms because its biodegradable. but isint the paper contaminated with chemicals. and if the worms eat that would that hurt the quality of the compost?
Mike Lieberman April 17, 2010 at 12:07 am -

I never heard anything bad about paper except to not use glossy paper…I think. That's a great question though.
Laura Siegel April 17, 2010 at 12:33 am -

Yay, they made it!!
Mike Lieberman April 17, 2010 at 4:09 am -

Yes very exciting times.
truecrimson April 17, 2010 at 3:48 pm -

Nice. Well travelled worms 😉
IIRC all or almost all newspapers use vegetable based ink which is completely bio degradeable. I'm not sure if it's mandated by a law, EPA regulation, or just that they are trying to capture the “green” reader. But any newspaper should be fine.
truecrimson April 17, 2010 at 4:01 pm -

Apparently the Newspaper Association of America is the driving force, and by 2004 95%+ of all American newspapers were using soy based ink. The move and initial research was spurred by the 1970's OPEC situation, and rising petroleum prices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_ink
Mike Lieberman April 18, 2010 at 5:40 pm -

Thanks for doing the research. I tend to stay away from colored inks though. Not sure why I do bc I know others have successfully used them.