Cold Climate vermicomposting idea

Hello everyone.  A bit of back ground on my operation. I raise beef, herd is small, currently 11 head. Cow calf pairs with some stockers. I lease neighbors fields for hay. They have been depleted by previous annual cropping and need to be replenished with manure. Preferably composted manure.

I will build a loafing shed for cattle to collect manure a la Joel Salatin pigareator in 2023. Once pigs are done in the fall, I will clean out shed and pile the approximately 60 cubic yards of aerated/partially composted manure outside to age over winter. The following spring I'll add red wigglers to aged manure. That fall I'll add another 60  cubic yards of aged manure to windrow. The following spring I'll start harvesting front end loader loads of vermicopost for chickens to feast on worms as Edible Acres does. Eventually compost will be spread on fields.

My questions are whether worms will survive -25C in a  60 CY pile? What are recommendations on how many pounds of worms to innoculate pile with so the pile will be done in one year?  Would adding more woodchips to pile be beneficial as a food source for fungi for worms to eat?

Thanks and sorry for long post!

Hi Jeff,
There are a lot of questions there :) I am not an expert, but I will see what I can do.

The worms will survive just fine. They will reduce in numbers and go deep in the pile, but will be fine if its as big of a pile as you are talking about.

You could inoculate an entire windrow with a yogurt container full of worms... eventually. The more worms, the faster they can get to work, but the more costly it is for you. If they have plenty of food, they will reproduce and spread out.

I would not add more woodchips at that stage. I would keep all the carbon adding at the manure stage. Then let it marinate for a while.

My only concern with your plan (which sounds great) is that the compost might be more done faster than you think. The worms might not have as much food and you may be spreading it on the field faster than you think. From the videos I've seen, by the time the pigs are done with it, it's getting pretty far along in the process of becoming soil.

I used to live surrounded by cherry and apples orchards. The people that had the apple orchard across the road would make a windrow of cow manure in the fall. I'd say the windrow was at least 20 metres long. Not sure how tall.  They'd spread it in the orchard the next spring.  Winter temps would have been more like -10 typically.

Thanks Matt for feedback.  I'll have to play it by ear.  I believe there would still be lots of fungal and bacterial food for worms with my plan but you may be absolutely right. The cost of a yougurt container of red wigglers won't break me if there is nt.

The beauty of living in the time we are in is we can pick awesome parts of what others are doing and combine them in unique ways that best suit our own situations.  Would have been so much harder to do just 20 years ago.

Cheers