Reptile & Amphibian Forums

every time I get big silkworms, the ones I separate for breeding DIE. cham paradise said that they pupate after food is removed. It never occurred to me. Last time I had silk wroms, I let a bunch crawl around in my animals cages while I went away for the weekend. I figured they were all eaten. The next day, I found that only about half of them were eaten, the other ones made it to a hidden, dark part of the cages, and pupated. some of them were only 2/3 grown. ALL of the ones with food were dead. It's just like super worms, they have to be separated from food before pupating. I remember when I first ordered them, one was stuck between the boxes in the shipment, and had pupated--he had no food.

Yes sometimes stressed sikies will pupate but they do better to let them reach 5th Instar with food. They will leave the food and start looking for places to pupate. Cut up lengths of paper towel or toilet paper tubes to about 1 1/2" in length and put a rubber band around several of these to make shelters. Place these in the container with the silkies you want to pupate. Make sure you pupate quite a few of them so that you get a good ratio of males and females.

Hope this helps.
BigT

It's hard to find good info on completing the silkworm lifecycle. hmmm......

I've had some pupate on their own, but I'm just starting to try it for real.

1. I've read some places that the worms may not do well on an artificial diet and mulberry leaves are needed? Is the chow from Mulberry Farms good enough?

2. Any temps or humidity requirements to get them to pupate? What about once they've already pupated?

3. How do I count the instars? Do I just go by number of days?

4. Do the eggs have to be refrigerated? How long? Or can I just collect the eggs and hatch them?

5. Do I need to collect the eggs into sterilized petri dishes? Can I just sterilize my own container like with canning or is this unnessecary?

6. I don't have an incubator. One time I tried to hatch eggs and it didn't work - it was tough getting the humidity right, but I don't know if that was the problem. Any hints?

7. Am I making this too hard?

thanks for any wisdom you can send my way!
Joel Fish

...here are a few good silkworm rearing sites:

http://www.sericulum.com/index.html (this one has a planner so you know what to expect and when

http://www.pclaunch.com/~kayton/Silkworms/raising.htm

and I think this is the one John posted recently:http://www.geckolizards.com/photos/silkworms/index.html
just disregard the "moth blood" statement. It is not blood but something called cocoonase which they excrete to help break thru the silk (btw, it's water soluble so don't worry if it get anywhere

hope these help!

lele