Over and over it has been stated that one cannot raise Alabama Jumpers in captivity if you want them to be prolific. I am happy to be able to report I have finally proven this to be false as I currently have a good number of second generation Alabama Jumpers now growing in an interior worm bin on the farm.

The worm bin for this experiment was not large, rather only 4 ½ square feet of surface area. The depth is 18 inches with the original bedding material of 14 inches deep. I have approximately 800 Alabama Jumper worms in the worm bin.

As my original posts have stated, I have been able to hold these Alabama Jumpers and keep them healthy for approximately three months now. The problem was in having the correct conditions which would enable them to reproduce. As the last article mentioned, I was feeding them strictly Purina Worm Chow as they gobble it down. Currently I use it as a substitute which still disappears daily.

The difference came about when I began adding vegetable scraps, same as one would add to a red wiggler worm bin or worm farm.

I have noticed something recently with the addition of a second mound of pureed vegetable scraps once it cooled down. The majority of the Alabama Jumpers in this mound are the larger worms. I am not sure whether this is a coincidence or if there is some type of social behavior. I have never seen them to be aggressive to one another; hence I do not believe that the younger mature worms are being chased away. I do have to wonder if there could be some type of hierarchy to the Alabama Jumpers which is understood  that only larger mature worms to take over an area suitable for breeding while maintaining an understanding that the smaller worms stay out. This definitely has me intrigued so I have a new theory to try.

Back to the original reason for this article, as the picture illustrates below some recently hatched Alabama Jumpers. As they are young and this is an experiment, I am not going to pull a lot of them out as I am trying to disturb them as little as possible to receive more accurate results.

Hatched Alabama Jumpers

I will be trying to watch these to see at what rate they grow. To accomplish this I am trying a new bedding material which I will screen after two weeks in hopes of harvesting some cocoons from the Alabama Jumpers to raise separately.

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