Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So I finally ordered 150 silkworms yesterday (they came with 1/2 lb dry chow, makes 2 lbs of prepared chow), and 500 1/2" crickets. Here are my questions:

If you feed both silkworms and crickets, how do you do it? Do you alternate one feeding each day? Do you leave the worms in the salad dish all day for them to snack on and still feed crickets twice per day?

How many silkworms do you feed in a feeding?

What do you keep them in? Do they need anything besides the chow? I bought a flat rubbermaid-type container that's about 12" wide and about 18" long and 4" deep, is this big enough for 150 3/4" silkworms? Do I need to line it with anything or give them things to crawl on?

Whew, thanks for reading if you got this far. I hope someone has the answers for me

Melissa

I also keep silkworms for my beardies. I highly recommend keeping the silkworms on a mesh screen (bought a roll at home depot for $5 1/4" mesh holes).This makes it really simple to keep the silkworm container clean. Simply lift the screen and shake all the silkworm feces through the screen to the bottom of the container and throw away. The chow is all they need for food and they don't look far for the food so make sure you either use a grater and grate the chow right on top of them or put it as close as you can to them.

Depending on the size of the silkworms and the dragon will vary how much you can feed. For small dragons, and the smaller 1" or smaller silkworms, you can feed 10 per feeding. Use the same rule as for crickets, as much as they can eat in 5-10 minutes. Feed the silkworms slowly though, as some dragons will eat till they puke.

You could feed the crickets first thing in the morning than toss in silks later on in the day. Or, if your silks are a little on the small side, feed crickets till they are all gone then feed silks.

The container you have is fine, make sure it is well ventilated though. I typically kept my silkworms on a coffee cup tray and just dump it into a container each day to get rid of all the poo, pick up any silks that fell off with the poo and put them back on the tray. Then I just dump all the poo out of the container into the garbage. For small silkworms, you can shred the silkworm chow or cut small cubes (or pieces) and scatter them among the groups of silkworms on the tray. Egg carton can be used instead of coffee mug trays as well. I find the trays better as silkworms tend to climb up on the peaks of the egg carton and stay there, instead of going down into the recesses to eat. Also poo gets mixed up with food easier. The other end of the egg carton (the lid) would be better. The part the eggs sits in is better to use if you are letting the silkworms coccoon.
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PHLdyPayne

What I do to feed is feed dusted crickets in the morning then when I make a salad, I put around 10 to 20 silkies in with the salad. That works great for me as I am at work all day and the silkies can't hurt the dragons if left in the cage and they can eat whne they are hungry instead of having to wait till I make it home. Then when I get home I feed some waxies or some more silkies if all the ones in the salad are gone for a snack. I only feed the crickets to do the dusting in the mornings.

It is working out really well for me. I also agree with the poster who said the mesh is easy to use to get rid of poop.

Lady, have you found it hard to gfet the silkies to cocoon using the chow? I've heard it is hard to get them to without leaves...
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

we got silkies to cocoon while feeding them chow....only about half survived and then 90% of the survivors were males...but I think that was just bad luck. The eggs we did get look good and should be ready in another month...

They ate TONS of chow before they started spinning. They did prefer darker spots to spin in. We used egg crates and removed the cocoon as soon as it was fully formed.

DM