Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been interested in trying to raise several types of worms/insects for feeding my geckos and turtles, and very possibly to help me expand my collection of those things.

I have three large mulberry trees as of right now and have been reading the care of silkworms. I think they could be a very good addition to the diet for my herp collection. When the mulberry leaves all fall off, I would like to be able to still raise silkworms all year round.

I have seen silkworm chow around, but what I'd like to know is how one could make something like this. Could mulberry leaves be picked (before winter), dried out, ground up, and mixed with vitamins and calcium (or something to that extint) and be held in that form until it would be used?

I've read that the commercial chow is like a soft cheese after it's cooked. Does it include some type of gelatin, preservatives, other greens, leaves, or veggies? I'm not really looking for the exact formula, just for something that will work.

Thanks

Unless you're some kind of chemist with experience in food preservation, I dont think you'll have much luck, sorry to say.

Its a mixture of mulberry leaf extract, probabally pulverized freeze dried leaves. Then they probabally put complex starches and acids and vitamins back into it (in powdered form) with preservatives, as well as some kind of gelling agents. You might need to buy these in bulk (100lbs. or more at a time) to keep your costs down.

Its not as simple as that though, remember silkworms are fussy eaters. It could of taken lots of experimentation (1000's of batches and recipes) to get one that they wouldnt mind eating.

If you find out how, id buy it.

Silkworm chow has been perfected for the silkworm industry over many many years. Your best bet would be to buy some, have it analyzed by a lab.(probably around $20k) and then try to duplicate that analysis using other ingredients and then grind freeze dried mulberry leaves. All the equipment and cost would run many times what you could spend on silkworm chow in your lifetime--not to mention the hassle.

I understand you can very quickly boil the leaves and then freeze them for use in winter. (personally I use the chow all year long and feed my mulberry leaves to my beardeds and tortoises directly--it's a lot less work and I get better results raising the worms on chow only.

Do an internet search on sericulture (the art of raising silkworms) to find a lot of info. on them.

Rodney

I wasnt aware you had to boil the leaves before freezing them. I thought you could just put them in freezer bags?

Well, if it'll last the winter frozen, there's not much reason to buy or make the chow. I wasn't looking for the exact recipe that mulberry farms was using, just something that would work.

Probably this coming summer, i'll buy a couple hundred silworms, raise some of mulberry leaves, and then try to come up with different variations of a succesful silkworm chow for the remaining silkworms. Even if there's not much of a reason to do this, I like new challenges/projects.

If I have any progress next year, I'll post it on this forum!