If you rotate and sift your beetles every week you will get better production with much less work. It keeps all the mealworms within a week of each other so they are all the same size. This means you will just have to sift them out once for feeding. I produce over 100k mealworms a week in around 1 hour of time used. Also that mealworm poop is called frass and is absolutely wonderful for your garden and plants. I wrote a few articles on mealworms here but I run a group on Facebook also if you are interested in expanding your setup to produce more feed for your birds. I also sell my extra worms and sell my extra frass also. If you like mealworms have you looked into composting worms also? The are a different setup but breed quickly and produce quality castings for your gardens also and your birds will love them too.