After two years of successful operation of a dog poo worm farm (blog post 1, 2), I accidentally nuked it. The last time I gave my dogs an intestinal worm tablet, I promptly forgot about it. I remembered a couple of days later, but by then I had put several lots of poo in the worm farm. The worm tablet had gone right through my dogs and their worm tablet tainted poo nuked nearly all the worms in my worm farm!

After a couple of weeks the Reln Can-O-Worms worm farm was getting decidedly stinky — they should have a rain-forest type smell if maintained correctly. A little investigation revealed that worms were no longer happily munching away on my dogs’ poo, and the whole lot had become a putrid mess. The stench was so bad that even after showering and washing within an inch of going down the drain, the smell was still in my nose. There are no photos it was so disgusting!

I dug out the top working trays of my worm farm with no evidence of worms. Amazingly, the bottom working tray still had worms in about two thirds of the tray. It seems only one area of that tray was contaminated; worms were surviving in the other area — some worms were four to five inches long! I figured these worms must be tough so I kept them. I dug out the dead area, filled the hole with some re-hydrated coir block and put the lid back on the worm farm. I have sinced topped up these remaining worms with a Worm Affair booster box of worms from Bunnings.

Let’s hope that I have managed to re-start the worm farm successfully. It really is the best way to dispose of dog poo that I have used over more than 20 years of dog ownership.