Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Where can I buy silkworms for my bearded dragon and what care do they require to keep them alive?

can you feed regular earthworms to a dragon?

We use worms (red wigglers) as a sourse of food for our beardies. They are easy to gut load and about a third the price of a thousand crickets. If you need a source for these let us know. One thousand worms or pound is $5.00 plus the shipping. These are the worms they use for composting. So they thrive on table scraps. We keep ours in 60 qt tubs, with three pounds of worms in each tub. If properly maintained these will produce close to a million worms in a year. So buy only what you think you will use.

Hope this helps,

Yosemite
Reptayls Ltd.

Funny thing about earth worms. My adult female beardie is a beast, (20inches) and she will eat anything you put in front of her, vegatable, mineral or otherwise. So one time i tried earth worms, to see what she thought, she ran over, took a bite, and the FREAKED out cause the worm kept wriggling after she bit it. She ran like a bat outta hell and wouldn't touch them ever again. It was hilarious!

~Mim

We use California silkworms (www.californiasilkworms.com)

We occasionally use Mullberry Farms (www.mullberryfarms.com)

Silkworms only eat mullberry leaves or "silkworm chow". We use the chow. It comes as a powder that we mix with water and microwave for a few minutes. The batch is kept in the refrigerator. Once a day we cut off a "hunk" and grate it with a small cheese grater (you can also slice it thin). That is about it--they do not move much and do not escape.

We used eggs for our last batch. After they hatched it was about 10 days before they were big enough to start feeding out. They have lasted about 6 weeks and the leftovers have now spun coccoons. We are experimenting with starting our own colony....the first moths hatched yesterday...

Both sites are "related" (California Silkworms used to purchase all their eggs from Mullberry and raise them up to resell) so the quality is the same. California Silkworms uses a better packaging/mailing system.

Both sites also have great care sheets.

A lot easier than crickets and our dragon loves them!

DM

I used silkiestogo.com and got a great order from them. She was very helpful and the silkies came very small (like I ordered) so they will last longer.