Quantity has a lot to do with the price you will pay for your worms. Like any business, the seller needs to cover his costs and make a profit to stay in business and feed the kids. If you are buying a ton of worms the price will be lower than if you only want a pound or two. There are other factors involved as well. To get a grasp on the reasons that worm prices go up and down, consider the worms to be like any other perishable farm produce. When the weather gets hot, it costs more to ship, handle, raise, and market them. Some growers will not ship during summer months due to excessive losses in transit. During the winter months, in cold climates, the beds are frozen over and can not be disturbed until they thaw, without killing the worms. Industry wide epidemics have, in the past, caused shortages of worms driving the price up.

Price fluctuation due to supply and demand, shortages and gluts, is the same for the worm farmer as it is for farmers of most other stock. One difference is that the rancher or farmer growing cattle or most other kinds of stock or produce, has various associations working for him to steady the demand and lobby the government. Whereas, the worm farmer has to make it pretty much on his (or her) own.

So the time of year, the condition of the industry, the abundance or lack thereof, and lots of other things will play a role in what you pay for your worms. However, the quantity you purchase at one time will be the biggist factor. The more you buy, the cheaper the worms become. Worms packed 24 or 50 to a container for fishing have to have the container, handling, and delivery costs included in the price. Worms bought by the pound or by the thousand lot don't require so much expense for the grower to deliver or package...

Grade and Species are two other large factors in your cost for the worms. Some species will cost you upwards of $60.00 per thousand when bought 1000 at a time. (makes $15.00 per thousand for red worms look prety good!)

The Grade of red worms is usually just a matter of whether you get all breeders or bed run. Bed run means that the worms you receive will be smaller and of mixed sizes from babies to young breeders. When you order Breeders only, expect to pay a premium price. These are the biggest and best the farmer has to offer. They should be large, mature, breeding adult worms only. Breeders are sometimes refered to as 'bait size'. The bait size or breeders will cost you 2 or 3 times the amount you will pay for 'bed run'.

The thing to establish here is, what do you want the worms for? Going fishing?, or Selling bait worms? In a hurry to fill some orders you don't have enough bait size worms to fill? Then breeders or bait size is what you want. On the other hand, if you want to raise them, fatten them up and then sell the worms as breeders, or if you are using them for compost or garbage munching, the bed run worms will do nicely for you. Bed run red worms can be fattened quickly (2 weeks), and most will, even at the time of arrival, be making egg cases. So if time is not the issue and money is ...

When ordering worms, shipping practices and costs should be examined. Your location, whether it is hot or cold where you are, the time of year, your distance from the seller, and method of shippment, will all play a part in how much gets doled out to the carrier. Most suppliers expect the shipping costs to be paid by the buyer, but some include the shipping costs, insurance, etc. in the price of the worms. Robert F. Shields yearly publication, "Earthworm Buyer's Guide", lists hundreds of suppliers in the US and Canada AND Charlie Morgan's, "Earthworm Selling and Shipping Guide" gives the 'how to' of getting your worms where they need to go, in good condition and at the least possible price.

It is not always best to buy from the lowest bidder. You get what you pay for (on a good day), so it is worth keeping in mind that service, before, during, and after the sale has value as well. Nice little touches, like having the worms arrive in good condition because of the excellent packaging, or finding (in the box), a printed set of instructions on how to properly care for your newly arrived worms, could easily make the difference between success and failure to a start up business venture or, for the home enthusiast, a good experience instead of bad.

Guarantee's cost the supplier money. When shipping worms, it is common practice for the supplier to guarantee the arrival of the worms, at the buyers address, alive. Live delivery guarantees are sometimes abused at the receiving end. "The worms got here but they were all dead", or, "only half the shipment arrived". When this happens, the supplier must go through a ton of paperwork to collect the insured value (if they were insured) and must replace the worms. Most worm growers will honor the live shipment guarantee once but if it happens again, will then refund the buyers money to avoid having to ship over and over again. The Post Office and the shipping companies have various mechanisms to prevent fraud on insured packages. The point is that the grower, when a shipment is lost or the worms killed, looses money. Although it doesn't happen often, the cost of the times that it does must be defrayed (made up) somewhere. The cost of the worms goes up to cover honest shipping practices.

So cost isn't everything! One might even go so far as to say that, "cost is relative". Still think not? Then try this one on for size; you order 50,000 worms from a grower, they arrive dead and when you try to get back your $ per thousand and shipping/handling charges, you are told that the worms were not guaranteed and you should have paid extra to have them insured. Now not only do you have some very smelly boxes to deal with, all those waiting customers won't be getting their worms from you! It won't take many experiences like that to have made it well worth paying 2 or 3 times the price per pound but getting what you paid for when you needed it!

Last summer, as a test order, I ordered 10 pounds of E. foetida red worms from a company in the northern part of the country . They arrived here alive and although the boxes were crushed by the shipping company, the worms, after some resusitation efforts, survived. I do not put new arrivals into my main worm beds nor do I usually keep the bedding in which they were shipped. I throw the bedding into the trash (in a plastic bag), and send it on to the dump (not the compost pile), and quarantine the worms for a month or so. Well... this time I kept the bedding and added it and the worms, to a box for their quarantine period. Thank goodness I didn't just put them into an existing worm bed! It took about 3 weeks to show up, but show they did... the shipped bedding had termites in it! It took me about half a day to extract the worms, wash them, sterilize the box, mix up a complete new batch of bedding and get things back on an even keel.

Months later I mentioned the termites to the fellow who sent me the worms. He was surprised ... but not overly concerned. It was a near miss for me though! Termites are just about the last thing I want to introduce to my worm beds. Not that they will harm the worms, it's just that they eat the beds, bedding, and food of the worms, then move on over to the shed, the house etc. A good source of cures for these and other insect pests is, Charlie Morgan's book, "Manual of Therapeutic Medications & Pesticides for Worm Growers".

When worms arrive from even the best of suppliers, there is always the chance that the order will be contaminated by one or more undesirable pests or diseases. No reputable worm dealer will knowingly fill orders with sick worms or contaminated bedding. Still, once in a while it happens. It is a very good idea to isolate any newly arriving stock for at least 2 weeks, and it is a good idea for the shipper to use only unused (new) bedding materials when shipping worms. The most common bedding material for shipping is Canadian Peat.

There will always be additional fauna traveling with any shipment of worms. Small white worms (I can't remember their Latin name), which grow to about one inch long, are common arrivals. They don't bother red worms, but eat all the same foods and have no commercial value that I am aware of. They breed prolifically, and can become a problem in commercial beds meant to raise red worms. Ruth Myers, in her book, "A-Worming We Did Go", gives several cures which work on the little bliters. For the home or business using worms to eat garbage, there is no reason to be concerned about the white worms. They eat garbage and get along well with the red worms. When changing the bedding, just don't put back the white worms, return only the red worms to the new bedding and that will control their population.

Many benificial insects, nematodes (really!), fungus, molds, crustaceans, and bacteria may come in an order. If you are doing composting of the outdoor variety, they will be a huge plus to your efforts and will even be of value in an indoor box so long as they don't get out of hand population wise. That is, assuming that you are not getting the bad guys at the same time ... A good way to get all that biota is to order vermic compost or worm castings and add them to whatever you want to biologically enhance. It works for me! ;-) BTW: here's a benificial bug that most people don't realize is; the tiny Springtail is a predator of spidermites... (some kinds of spidermites pray on worm egg cases and baby worms)