Reanimating Hornworms (new pics - Pupae!)

Was running low on chow in habitats, so I did the fridge thing to buy a day's time (until dry chow arrived) ... they seem to be taking a really long time to get moving again? What is normal timeframe for them to act normal?

We just got HW eggs (kids wanted to try hatching them) -- made the shoebox habitat for the eggs, and made a 2nd one for the fridge guys (moved them very carefully!) They are firmer now that they are warmer (they felt kinda squishy when cold?) And we mixed fresh chow for the eggs, so we gave these guys fresh, too.

They just seem to be lazy, not eating like before? but I checked, they are alive (they'll slowly crawl onto my finger). Did I hurt them? We checked the fridge temp, it was above 40 where we had them, and they were only there for 16 hours.

OMG -- one of my horns looked like this today?!? What happened? Is it turning inside-out or something?!?

That's weird Dawn!
But very cool that you and the kids are hatching and growing them.
You'll have to continue to show us pic's of each stage as they hatch and grow.

OMG -- one of my horns looked like this today?!? What happened? Is it turning inside-out or something?!?

Click to expand...

Ewwww, that definitely qualifies as the grossest thing I've seen. (today)

It really does look like the poor thing has prolapsed something, probably its gut. My guess is that it won't live long. Freezer euthanasia maybe?

We have decided to try hatching the eggs -- BTW anyone considering greatlakes, Rob is phenomenal -- he has been so patient with all our questions, and he is a wealth of knowledge!

Our daughter is very into "bugs", I won't be surprised if she becomes an entomologist of somehow works with bugs when she grows up... so, we decided to get some eggs. Our first try was experimental... we ended up losing some to our own stupidity (do NOT use saran wrap to cover the container, they stick and don't come off without injury!)

Here are some pics when the hornworms started hatching:



These eggs are TINY -- they are about the size of the head on a sewing pin:

We used crafting plastic canvas (for yarn cross-stitch) for the ladders, I love macro photography!:

PEEK-A-BOO, I see you!!

That's awesome Dawn thanks for keeping us posted with pic's. :wink:

Richard my 12 year old an I found a moth that the cat brought in last year so we put in in a bug container an it layed eggs the eggs hatched, but there was a small spot of adhesive on the top of the container that we didn't see and the baby hornedworms all got stuck to it. Of course this was a wild caught moth so we weren't trying to get food out of it for the beardies. But it was fun for Richard an I to watch. I think I might have to try out some hornedworm eggs this year. I do have plenty of hornedworm chow mix left. :idea:

Hi Barbara & crew -- we've done a lot of trial and error with the hornworms -- I just had an abcessed molar yanked, so I'm on light duty for a couple days, but I can't sit and do nothing (not in my nature!)

We're charting our trial and error -- it makes for a great science project! I'll post more this weekend on what we've already learned :mrgreen: especially because the larvae only live about 3 weeks, their lifecycle is neat to watch.

BTW -- we finally have superworm babies!!! I think I ruined our first batch (not enough moisture or something?), but we just moved our beetles again to a fresh tank, and we've got LOTS of microscropic wormies in there! Oh, yeah! success!!!

Congrats on trying to see the whole process from egg to moth!
My daughter loves bugs too (5 years old).
Last summer, we saw a Monarch butterfly laing some eggs in our garden. We carefully picked the milkweed leaf and tended the eggs and babies and got to see them form their chrysalis, and emerge as butterflies that we released back into the garden. We also did Black Swallowtails from caterpillars we found in the garden.
It is a fascinating thing to watch., and we plan to do it again this summer.
Lucky to be such a talented macro photographer! Great pictures! We took pictures through all five instars using my daughter's finger as a comparison. Your plastic canvas and skill with the macro lens will give you a fantastic record of growth.
Be preared for how fast it goes... if anything like my butterflies last summer, they will form a coccoon/chrysalis in about two weeks, and emerge two weeks after that. Have lots of food available, and be ready to clean up lots of frass every day!

So, to share some of our "notes" for anyone else who wants to purchase hornworm eggs and hatch them... :study:

1./ if they are in a shoebox like some sites suggest, they will escape and you will be doing cattle roundup for awhile!

2./ Rob at greatlakes is going to start offering the empty habitat cups with the mesh already stapled in it. We found our "solution" to be getting those empty cups, and mixing the food when the package arrived. That way you carefully place the eggs in the habitat after food sets up, and you just watch them hatch and peek at them for the first week! :mrgreen:

3./ They are SOOO tiny when the hatch. Their horns look huge compared to their size! but it's fun to watch them wiggle their way to the food.

4./ Try not to disturb the habitat for the first 5 days or so after setting it up. We had our best success this way, we propped it up for ventilation on a bookshelf (tilted on a CD case), which gave us a great viewing spot, but we didn't have to disturb them (and spill eggs!).

:arrow: 5./ Make sure you let the food setup properly! I accidentally mixed a small batch and tried to rush the process... not worth the effort, the food will fall and crush your little guys.

6./ Do NOT use Saran Wrap to cover a plastic shoebox. I used the new wrap that has the texture, what a nightmare. I lost 75% of the little guys, because they stuck and couldn't get off it.

7./ If you need to move the worms when they're tiny, you can GENTLY use their horn ... they hate to have the horn touched!

8./ If you need a partial batch of food, measure it in grams. Every distributor is different on their mixing instructions, so make sure you measure the whole original packet in grams, and divide as needed. I was off by 10 grams of water on a 1/8 batch and it was a gooey mess. I was in a rush and didn't check my math, won't make that mistake again.

9./ Once they are getting above the 2-inch size, watch for overcrowding. They will jockey for position on the mesh ladders, looks like they're ready to throw-down... but overcrowding of a cup will make them eat each other. We found 2 larger guys eating a little guy.

10./ Wanderers... when you hatch eggs, and have only 1-2 beardie mouths to feed, you may notice a worm or two "wandering" aimlessly round and round. This is apparently a sign that they are ready to pupate.

11./ If a hornworm gets "gooey" by getting poo'd on from his buddies, you can carefully wash them off, and pat them dry. Just use minimal water, and be ready to feed off right away.

12./ Yes, they DO bite when they get over 2-inches... I had a blonde-moment and got three in my hand for feeding, and two of them attacked and bit me. Glad the kids weren't home, I said a few inappropriate words! :shock:

13./ We split a "50 egg" order in two cups ... of course, remember there are overages when you order eggs! Be ready to split them up after about 7-10 days!

14./ Be ready to put the cups together ASAP after receiving the eggs -- they can hatch in normally 3-5 days, but we had one hatchling the night we received our eggs!!!

That's all I can think of now, I will update again if we get any new info! We're at 1 week hatchlings right now, and a few are growing faster than others. That's good, tho, as our others are almost all eaten, and li'l Miss Xena gets sassy if she doesn't get a green puffy marshmallow!!! (Spoiled rotten dragon). Not sure yet if we'll try getting moths / breeding ... it would be so much more affordable, but I read up on two college sites, and it's pretty intense on how to do it right... why do I have more feeder bins than beardie vivs?!?!? :!:

Those are some awesome tips!

For the itty-bitties, you can also use an artist's brush to gently swipe them up and move them. And I've heard second-hand about them hating to have their horn touched. My dh is taking over the feed-hornworm-to-beardie process while I'm out of town, and he said that they'll let go of the mesh if you use the horn. (bigger ones) Considering how tightly they'll cling onto anything, I'm curious to see if this really works. I hate pulling them off the mesh - it feels like they're going to tear apart before they let go! :shock:

Ok, it's been a nutty few weeks, but we've got pupae, with a hatchling expected soon! My kids love to turn anything into a science experiment :shock:

We aren't sure what the end result of this is going to be -- the eggs we hatched the 2nd go-around worked beautifully! We had so many, and it was neat watching them grow. It's amazing how the differing sizes can be from an egg set that all hatch within a day of each other...

These all hatched within a day of each other:


Well, even our two hungry piggies couldn't eat them all once the size exploded, so the kids wanted to try and pupate a worm. We figured why not, so we took a small tupperware container, put a slightly damp papertowel in, picked a hornworm that was not eating (their dorsal heart line will get darker, and if you look close, it looks like they have a "line of arrows" pulsing down their back). Loosely wrapped hw, put in dark cupboard top shelf for 5 days. Voila!


Now comes the scary part. First, the rearing box is a pain to setup (very particular details from the manducaproject dot com)... The moth emerges from the pupae state approx 21 days after turning, and it's important to have them in the rearing box already so you don't touch the moths... we're expecting it to emerge this weekend-ish...

The hardest part is, WHERE do you find a host plant alive this time of year in NE Ohio?!? Yikes, we're hoping a hydroponic grower up the road comes thru this Friday, because no host plant, no breeding!

Will keep you posted as moth emerges! (we have multiple pupae, 2 will hatch first, then about 8 more a week later)...

Yay for hornworms!

I hope your quest for host plant goes better than mine. The tomato plants that I got from the greenhouse didn't that tomato-y smell, and the hornworms completely ignored them. I got less than 10 eggs.

Ooooh, someone who's done this before - yay! Is it hard from this point on?

We have bins and artificial diet... will prepare it as needed. The hydroponics place was hoping to have rooted plants for me this Monday, but they won't be ready until about Friday -- timing will be close! He also has a pepper plant in the cloning machine, so I've got my fingers crossed!

We're hoping for the best, it's been an interested journey already!

Haha! Journey of the Hornworm... sounds like a pretty good title for a book! Better than Journeys with Hornworms, anyway.

If you can get eggs, you're home-free. It's the getting-eggs part that has me stumped . I raised hornworms through more than 5 generations during the summer and fall, and thought it was pretty easy (a labor of love, actually). But the cold weather and lack of host plant has this small-time operation slowed to a crawl.

If you do get plants, and the moths oviposit on the leaves, try to remove the eggs before they hatch. I don't know about hornworms, but other kinds of caterpillars won't switch to artificial diet if they get a taste of real food. (who can blame them... that stuff stinks!) The eggs pop off fairly easily, and it's so cool to collect the little blue-green jewels! I never actually put the host plant inside the flight cage, so the moths would lay eggs on the netting as close to the leaves as they could get. Well, most of them did. There're always a few "free spirits" that like to machine-gun the top of the cage with eggs. And some of them are adept at shooting eggs past the netting. Sometimes, I find eggs several inches away from the cage. Surprise!

I've actually got some moths, now, and it's a lot warmer than the last cycle. I'm going to try another round of greenhouse tomato leaves to see if it was just the cold that left my gals uninspired, or if the lack of leaf-scent was the problem. Actually, I'm wondering if Home Depot might have a few tomato starts for the garden dreamers. Hmmm.... <off to the store>

I got super lucky and found some at Walmart of all places! I was popping in to grab something else, and figured i'd check out the greenhouse... sure enough, they had some 6" tomato plants, so I grabbed 2 varieties... We're in ohio, so that's zone 4 I think... if I have them, anyone south of me should have them in by now... yippee, now we're tidying up the new "box" and getting ready to watch hatching from cacoons this weekend! We'll try and get pics