Hammerhead Worms

Although I don't see very many, I do have hammerhead worms on this farm. This is a flatworm, or also called a planaria. They are a predatory critter that feasts upon earthworms. Yikes!!! Ok, ok, ok. Settle myself down. That's just how Mother Nature works. I just need to keep their numbers down so that they don't wipe out my healthy worm population. 

There are lots of different kinds of hammerhead worms, but I've only seen one type on my farm. It's a long, striped, somewhat gooey looking slimy thing with a blunt-ish head, not the striking hammerhead of other varieties. It's not robust like an earthworm, but instead it's rather fragile, easily broken apart into pieces. But that's not good. No, not at all. Because it's a planaria. And planaria can reproduce from those broken pieces, creating lots of new individuals. So simply chopping them up is making things worse, not better. 

To get rid of these planaria, I need to kill them. So far I've used a bit of salt to do that. Just like with slugs, I can sprinkle them with salt to destroy them. 

I don't actively go hunting these planaria, but sometimes I come upon them. It's always in a moist, dark spot, such as between two wet boards laying on the ground. Or deep inside a pile of wood debris. Or in the case of the photo, between two sheets of old roofing laying in the shade and that had been rained on, so that it was wet. 

So far I'm only finding these worms a few times a year. Their population hasn't been increasing.....so far, so good.