Seperating live from dead mealworms???

[Country Gecko]

Anyone know any tips on how to quickly seperate dead mealworms from live ones? I get 10,000 at a time and refrigerate them (taking them out and feeding them once a week) and have always picked through them to remove the deads.

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[Gecko Ranch]

Let's see if I can remember my original reply! It went something like "Don't refridgerate mealworms!" This does something to them that makes them less appealing to geckos, probably because this is not natural! Refridgeration also kills a lot of them. I order a batch of mealworms every week from my supplier, Bassett's. I have never had an issue with dead mealworms even keeping excess mealworms and letting them reproduce.

To have many dead mealworms in your food supply is to risk some sort of ghastly bacterial contamination. Imagine if we kept our meat cows like that, oh gosh, just pick out the live one, that'll make great eating!

Just let them grow and gutload the heck out of them before your geckos eat them. It is really simple! Here's my care sheet:

http://www.geckoranch.com/care.html

 

[Country Gecko]

Julie, thanks for your reply....

Sorry, I forgot about this post! To clarify my previous post, I have been refrigerating my mealies for years with very little trouble. They usually last me months with no problems. This particular time I received them late due to shipping delays while in transit. This is why there are a fair amount of deads among the lot. I just wanted to know if anyone has any neat ideas on how to seperate the live from dead for this particular situation.

As for refrigerating them, I do it because I do not have enough geckos to receive an order every week without breaking the bank buying smaller amounts. It does sound somewhat interesting to simply raise my own. I never bothered since I never have problems with refrigerating them. I simply take them out of the ridge to feed once a week while maintaining them in a fresh bed of regularly changed gutload.

Julie, do you have to hand pick all the mealies from the breeding colony that you maintain?

Again thank you for your reply,
Glenn

 

[Bodon]

You know, my friend feeds his chameleon crickets and mealies and i always complain about dead meal worms and he always says he never has them. He never puts them in the fridge, and after reading what you wrote, i think ill keep mine out too.