Dermestid Setup & Care + Small Animal Cleaning

This ended up being unnecessarily long, but I hope it helps someone! Since I mostly detail husbandry of beetles and how I clean small animals, I’ll have to do another vid at some point focusing on large animals. Sometimes they will need to be gutted or otherwise prepped if there’s too much meat for your colony. In the meantime, here’s a great instructional video on prepping a deer skull for them:

I mention the smell isn’t too bad, but I definitely don’t have them working on anything too massive while they’re indoors. Anything bigger than a large rat or a rabbit in a couple pieces, I would freeze and wait for warmer weather. I also mention how even something like a moose could be cleaned in my small tank (10 gallon) if you divvy it up enough and had a lot of patience, but the problem with ungulates and cervines lies in the size of horns and antlers. If you want to keep them intact, that’s reason enough to opt for a bigger tank. It all depends on what you’ll be cleaning. I run a “cruelty-free” workshop where I basically only work with roadkill and other animals found dead, so I never know what I’m going to get.

I didn’t bring up mites, as I’ve had no issue with mites in my colony, but I hear they can result from too much humidity, carcasses that haven’t first been frozen or boiled, or exposure to a natural environment. So if you leave tanks like mine in your backyard for instance, mites and other infestations are almost guaranteed. A relatively protected and dry environment (like a shed or garage) is ideal. I had to battle maggots in my smaller tank before I got my system down and now I always, ALWAYS freeze the carcass first. Mites would have been even harder to deal with. Here’s another great video, this time on how to tell if your colony has mites:

Thanks for watching!

Check out the finished pieces I have for sale on my Etsy:

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