I work at a farm that produces live feed, mostly for pet stores and zoos. I've been working there full-time for a year-ish, amd I have experience with the production of Tenebrio spp. (mealworm beetles), Galleria spp. (waxworm moths), and Acheta spp. (house crickets). This includes every stage of the life cycle: egg + larva + pupa + adult for the "worms", and egg + nymph + adult for the crickets. The "worms" are sold as larvae for optimum nutritional value and trophic return-on-input, whereas the crickets are sold as adults. My job is one of the "dirty jobs" at the farm. Well, everyone's job there is dirty, but I'm one of the ones scooping feed, breathing clouds of bug shit, handling the product and sometimes having it crawl all over us, being swarmed by moths and beetles and flies, and dodging cockroaches. It's not as terrible as it might sound but it's definitely not clean.
This is a throwaway account that I'll be checking as much as I can today and tomorrow and maybe Monday too. I do not do push notifications or phone notifications and I'm not extremely online enough to respond to everything within 5 minutes, but I'll be logged on at least once an hour for this today. I will respond to every single question if I can, it just might take awhile. If you know or have an inkling of what my main is, shh, plz dun dox. After this AMA is complete I may abandon this account, I only made it for this (plus the bit).
To clear a few things up, YES, I have eaten the product, and YES, I do have a deep hatred for the careerist, corporate-ladder-climbing administrative class. Any other resemblences to a similar username are coincidental.
-WwF
Putting new broods of mealworms/waxworms/crickets in feed containers, separating larger worms from smaller worms (many insect larvae molt about a dozen times before pupating), moving the more mature insects to different rooms ("bug barns"), catching the adults at the right time to transfer them to different containers for breeding, topping off feed and/or water supply, cleaning down the area. Most of what I've been doing involves screening/filtering the bugs for pupae and adults. We work 8 hours a day but it's possible for a larva to reach adult stage in 3 days, and if the adults are mating before they're in the egg-laying bins, their eggs end up wasted (or develop early and fly around where they're not wanted).
Knew a guy who already worked there.
If they continue to pay me well enough, allow me to take time off, let me to do a variety of tasks, and value my contributions to their productivity, maybe a year or two, maybe even a bit longer. If they force me to just do tedious grunt work, then only as long as it takes for me to have a shot at labor organizing.
If the American building paradigm is cheap and flimsy, this facility is even flimsier. A lot of it is pretty low-tech actually. Everything is grown indoors, so there are fluorescent lights and HVAC systems for the grow rooms. Some of them even have humidifiers. But most of what I work around is plastic tubs that go on wooden racks, plus plastic bags and cardboard. Some feed we order by the 40lb bag, other feed we order by the truckload. Many of the buildings are fairly new but already look like they're aging. We're often pushing (sometimes forklifting) racks and supplies around from building to building, like worker ants. Spiders and cockroaches are everywhere.