Tour: Hungry Worms with Scott Kent

A virtual tour of a vermicomposting facility!

Nov 23, 2025

In Part I of our series with Scott Kent of Hungry Worms, we interviewed him about his vermicomposting business journey. Today, in Part II, Scott gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how he raises worms—from their first days as tiny cocoons to their big debut as composting powerhouses. With his step-by-step notes, photos, and videos, this virtual tour brings into life on a worm farm. Enjoy!

The Life Cycle of a ‘Hungry Worm’ Red Wiggler

By Scott Kent

1. How Worm Babies Are Made

Over the years I’ve worked with lots of different feedstocks for the worms, starting with food waste from local restaurants then moving to manure as I live by a lot of dairies. Today we use dairy manure as the feedstock for all of our worms.

We place Adult worms in this manure material and give them the opportunity to find love, settle down, and start a family in what’s called a “breeder bin”. Earthworms are hermaphrodites, and during mating both worms will become “pregnant” and lay a “cocoon” that will develop 1 - 5 baby worms.

The cocoons take about 3 - 4 weeks to hatch, and the adult worms are removed before the babies are born so that all the worms in a bin are the same size / age. The baby worms spend a few weeks in the breeder bin before being given more room to grow.

A pick-up of dairy manure from a nearby farm

An average of 3 red wigglers will hatch from each golden cocoon

2. Growing Healthy Red Wigglers

We have a pretty impressive shelving system which stores all the bins that the worms live in. They are mortar trays with a sheet of bubble wrap over them to prevent excess evaporation.

The breeder bin that the baby worms started in eventually gets divided into more bins to minimize competition for available nutrition and give them access to more food. Each new bin that is started gets filled up with fresh manure which doubles as bedding and food for the worms to eat. Once the worms have processed the manure, if they aren’t fully grown yet, the bins will get divided again until that generation of worms has had the chance to plump up and reach adulthood.

An iteration of Hungry Worms shelving system where bins of worms are bred and raised

Video: This is what the material and worms look like just before harvest.

3. Worm Harvesting & Shipping

The adult worms are separated from the composted material through a worm harvester. Most of them are shipped off to find a new home with composters, home gardeners, and businesses all around the country (and sometimes out of the country!) to help people turn their organic waste back into living plants.

Some worms are kept for me to make a new generation of baby worms, and that process continues. The vermicompost that falls through the trommel during worm harvest goes into a continuous flow-through system (CFT) for further processing, along with some worms that slip through.

Video: the worm harvesting process

Packaged worms headed to new homes across the country

This is what 10 lbs of worms looks like (!)

A whopping 48-lbs of worms being packaged up

4. Worm Casting Production

Up to this point, everything has been focused on worm reproduction and growth. From here we are focused on producing worm castings. All the vermicompost that the worms were living in gets placed into a CFT bin which has its own separate worm population—none are removed from the system for sale as the goal here is not to sell worms, but to produce castings.

The design of a CFT plays on worm’s attraction to food. At first, you won’t do any harvesting until the bin has been completely vermicomposted and is full of worm castings. Then, you place a layer of fresh food on top. The worms will leave the lower levels of the bin to eat the fresh food.

A cutting bar (pictured) can then been used to cut across the bottom of the bin, causing a couple inches of worm castings to fall through the grate. The remaining material in the bin will then sink a couple inches due to the lost material on bottom, leaving new room to add more fresh food on top once they have converted the previous feeding into castings.

From here our castings are shipped to our customers — home gardeners, greenhouse farmers, and even a group of competitive pumpkin growers :)

Filled CFT with some sprouts coming up after processing some pumpkins

Empty CFT bin; arrow points to the horizontal blade that runs along a track just above the bottom grate, this is how castings are harvested

A (beautiful) mound of harvested worm castings

Wow! Huge thanks to Scott for opening the bins and sharing his knowledge and operation with us. Stories like these remind me that doing good, meaningful work doesn’t have to be overly complex. A little care and intention can go a long way in facilitating others and the change we wish to see in the world.

To connect with Hungry Worms, or to snag some worms or castings for yourself, check out hungryworms.com