Step Two: Raising Silkworms

After Eggs Hatch

-Temp 75-85 (this temp needs to remain the same throughout every stage of growth to ensure optimum growth and life)

I fed the silkworms entirely too much food at the beginning I found that taking a small amount in my fingers and crumbling it worked much better and I had less waste

-feed the silkworms 3 times a day with ONLY MULBERRY LEAVES OR MULBERRY MUSH!!!!! When they get older you can actually HEAR them eating

I get my silkworm food from Mulberry Farms, they are fast at delivering and the prices are reasonable Silkworm-Chow-Food

-eventually we moved the silkworms out of the cottage cheese lid (when they were about 2 ½ weeks old

-as the silkworms got bigger we upgraded them to cookie sheets

-as they continued to get bigger we added cooling racks

-eventually we added spacers made from toilet paper rolls split into 3rds. This was important because it allowed for air and heat to flow between levels, and gave the larvae some headroom, but it also meant that the above floor was close enough for them to climb up onto if they were choosing to cocoon

-we had so many silkworms that we had to do a three tiered apartment setup for them.

-eventually as it became apparent that the silkworms (they were climbing a lot and laying some silk webbing on everything) were wanting to cocoon I took the newspaper off the cooling racks and placed an egg carton on the top rack. The silkworms always climb up to cocoon. They didn’t always make it to the egg carton, some chose to cocoon on the underneath side of the racks but this again allowed for airflow and free silkworm movement 

this is what we were trying to duplicate

-to maintain heat this is what we did

-it was a crude setup but it worked, to maintain the temp the silkworm needed to survive we placed their entire housing complex inside a box and stuck a light inside (it was a normal 45 watt bulb and desk lamp, nothing special)

-then we covered the whole thing with a towel, this allowed for air to still flow and extra heat to be released, we didn’t have extra moisture issues (which can become a problem because of all the waste they create)

-we experimented with many ways of creating an environment and this seemed to work the best for us. We started out with the silkworms in plastic containers that were stacked and that worked until the silkworms got bigger and needed more airflow and created a lot of unnecessary moisture (it was like sleeping on a plastic air mattress when your sweaty…yuck!) The silkworms began to die off at an incredible rate when this happened and that’s when we switched to the racks and box method.

****-as they got bigger they began to create a large amount of waste and we found that it was necessary to change the newspaper every 2-3 days as suggested at the wormspit website

***-ALSO if the poop newspaper isn’t changed the silkworms can really kick up some wicked smells so save yourself the trouble and CHANGE THE NEWSPAPER!!!

-the growth cycle takes anywhere from 25-40 days once the silkworms have hatched

-we would have anywhere from 2-10 that would get sick at one time. We removed them from the others and housed them in an egg carton that was dubbed “sickbay” where we continued to keep them warm and with food. Sometimes they would recover and would cocoon up as you can see on the left bottom but most would slowly darken and die. They always had a “water burial” when this happened.