Hi everyone,
I've recently started adding silkworms to Frasier's diet and have noticed something interesting that I thought I'd share with you all, in case you have seen the same thing in your chams.
This is actually the second time I've bought silkworms. The first time I bought them, several months ago, I ended up losing half my colony of 100 silkworms because I couldn't get Frasier to figure out how to eat them. I would put the silkworm on the screen of his cage and he would constantly miss his aim, causing the silkworm to bounce off the screen and onto the floor. He had no trouble with the hornworms, however, but at the time, I figured it was because the bloody things were so huge. LOL And the silkworms were only 1" long.
Anyway, I ended up discovering that Frasier didn't have that problem whenever I put the silkworms on the leaves. By the time I found this out, though, I was all out of silkworm chow and so the rest of my silkworms died. But at least I found out the trick to feeding them.
So, I bought another silkworm culture (only 25 this time, but of various sizes). Because there's enough chow included to grow the silkworms to full size, I let them get nice and big before feeding them to Frasier. Been putting them on the leaves of his plants, like last time, but I noticed that he still seemed to have trouble locating them.
This morning, I placed one right on his basking branch, a few inches away from him, and sat there honestly wondering if there was something wrong with Frasier's vision. He simply could not nab the worm! He kept aiming right above it with his tongue, kept getting closer and closer until his mouth was actually touching the worm, and still his tongue kept going for the area directly above the worm. After about 10 tries, he finally did get it, but I think it was more by accident by then. LOL
Anyway, I figured out that it might be the fact that the silkworms are white. I actually remember a discussion about that a while back on this forum. So I decided to try something: I took another one of the big silkworms, covered it with a thin layer of corn syrup, then crumbled some dried parsley and covered the worm with that, making it look green. Put it in front of Frasier, and his tongue aimed right for the center of the worm, nabbing the worm on the first try.
So if anyone else is having similar problems with their chams, coating the worm with something green really helps. LOL Maybe next time, I'll try some alfalfa powder from the health food store...
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Julie Williams
www.baskingwonders.com
