Thank you flowerbugno, don't add chicken poo to worms.
what are you keeping them in right now?
what kind of worms?
if they are the usual composting worms, red wrigglers, they do best in all organic materials, so you don't need any dirt for them to be happy, just some moisture and anything organic is fine. shredded paper or strips of paper, cardboard chunks, some damp is ok, but you don't want too much or things will ferment and go anaerobic which can get pretty smelly.
and then whatever food scraps (the usual recommendation is to not add meat scraps, fats, diary or citrus peels).
my own take on keeping worms is quite different:
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hope they've recovered or done better since...
Now I've never thought of miniature spiders what an excellent idea. I could add them in the lid of my compost bin to. I found a huge slug in the compost bin yesterday even the eggshell doesn't keep them outyou'd be amazed at what they can survive.
my first 30 worms came from the bait store too and i didn't know it at the time that they were in fact an excellent mixed soil composting worm. they've survived everything i've done to them since then and it has been over 10yrs now.
my first and only full count census of the worms came about three months after i put the worms in the buckets/bin i was using at the time. i counted nearly 200 tiny worms (that i could find/notice) and was down to 26 adult worms by then, but the population continued to flourish.
now the population roughly bounces between 5,000 and 100,000 worms depending upon where i am in the cycle of things. the low spot is after i put the worms out in the gardens in the spring (as my only source of fertilizer) and i don't sort the worms out of the buckets as i put them in the gardens so i just have to keep enough worms back to restart the buckets.
the only thing i'm doing differently the past year or so is using miniature spiders to help control the fungus gnats and fruit flies that sometimes try to get going in the buckets as i do import some humus from outside into the buckets so they can start hatching out and then have population explosions. without the tiny spiders i've had hundreds of thousands of fungus gnats in a single bucket and it makes for a fun time in the middle of winter when you need to add some food to a bucket and you have to take it outside to open it up. since i've been using the tiny spiders they've mostly caught the outbreaks in population of gnats before i've had to resort to extreme measures. this will be the 2nd winter with the spidies so we'll see how it goes. i'm surprised the spiders have been able to survive as i've been trying to get them established and spread to all ten buckets.
I loathe these things they never go away
lots of little red wiggles. Just wanted too let you know. Thanks buddy 
