Selling extra Hornworms? Preserve them?

Good morning, everyone!

About 2 months ago I bought 50 eggs from Greatlakeshornworms (awesome stuff!), had over 50 caterpillars (all but one hatched!) but since I only have one bearded dragon he wasn't able to eat them all (I did the mistake of waiting until they were fully grown to feed them off).

Ended up with over 20 pupa and decided that I might as well breed them.
Long story short, today I had my first harvest of eggs and it turned out to be 290! And this is only from the first night of eggs.... (and not all moths hatched yet!!)

Does anyone have suggestions what I can do with the extra hornworms I will have?
Hubby will offer a friend with 2 beardies some for cheap but that won't be enough.
We assume that Petsmart won't be interested in buying our extras either... Our only idea is to offer it to a seemingly privately owned petstore eventually, but what else can we do?

I've also considered Craigslist but I'm not sure how well that could work.
I'm grateful for any ideas!

Maybe it'd be possible to preserve the hornworms for later use? (Freeze or 'boil&can'?)
I'm at a loss

Wish you all a great day!

I would recommend searching facebook for reptile groups in your area. In my city we have a reptile classifieds group and also a reptile rescue group that allows for sale posts. If I saw that someone was selling some extra hornworms for a good price and I didn't have to pay shipping, I'd buy them in a heartbeat!

How did you like breeding them? I have about five very large hornworms left over right now and I have no idea what to do with them. From what I've read, breeding them can be a little complicated and the moths can be messy, so I haven't tried, but maybe I will.

onceblue":k0b6hbca said:

I would recommend searching facebook for reptile groups in your area. In my city we have a reptile classifieds group and also a reptile rescue group that allows for sale posts. If I saw that someone was selling some extra hornworms for a good price and I didn't have to pay shipping, I'd buy them in a heartbeat!

How did you like breeding them? I have about five very large hornworms left over right now and I have no idea what to do with them. From what I've read, breeding them can be a little complicated and the moths can be messy, so I haven't tried, but maybe I will.

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Ahh great idea I'll try to see if there's any groups for reptiles anywhere nearby.

Breeding them is sort of fun, but I'm a very nature-y person and loved bugs even as a child (nothing grosses me out lol). I can imagine they could be horror for some people.

It's rather easy to keep them, given you have the basic setup. We have ours in a 18x18x36 reptibreeze and yes THEY ARE MESSY, oh my god!

First when they hatch there's a fountain of clear-red/brown liquid they spew EVERYWHERE while struggling to get on their feet.
Then, after a while (or if you disturb them somehow), they spray a cream-colored liquid around. Some actually managed to shoot out of the top (we got a plastic tablecloth from the $ store wrapped around it, top isn't covered), I was stupid enough to keep my BLACK shoes near the enclosure.
Third! They're drinking red liquid (hummingbird food) so there's red sprays mixed in everywhere as well. Thankfully I put a layer of paper towels on top of a towel on the bottom so cleaning up their initial messes wasn't so bad.

They are messier than expected and I can't wait for them to finish breeding and die (oh god I'm a terrible person!) so I can clean the cage.

If you have an area that can easily be cleaned and if you don't mind the smell (yes there's a slight smell to them) and dust (the scales from their wings that fly around, some moths have kind of messed up wings from bumping against screen) I definitely recommend breeding them, it's much easier than expected honestly.

If you want I can tell you about how I did the setup and about how much it cost me. I'm quite the cheap ass (and so is hubby :lol: ) so I did try to look for cheap/clean ways to do this.

In what area do you live? I'm at the NC/SC border. I'm really hoping I can find people that will want these, I'm assuming these 290 eggs were from one or two moth couples (and I popped about 40-60 while trying to harvest them!)...

LOL Actually I think you just talked me out of it. I really don't want to deal with all that mess, and I think my husband would kill me if I kept moths that spray everywhere, even if I could keep them mostly contained.

But thank you so much for the info, and for offering more info/tips for getting them started.

I live in Texas, but if I were closer, I'd definitely buy some from you. It's impressive that they bred so much!

onceblue":2xttxr7v said:

LOL Actually I think you just talked me out of it. I really don't want to deal with all that mess, and I think my husband would kill me if I kept moths that spray everywhere, even if I could keep them mostly contained.

But thank you so much for the info, and for offering more info/tips for getting them started.

I live in Texas, but if I were closer, I'd definitely buy some from you. It's impressive that they bred so much!

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Ha, in all honesty when I read up on them and found out they're messy I maaaay have kept that little fact from the hubby until it was "too late" . Only after they pupated I carefully let him in on that.

Needless to say he's not exactly thrilled but since the mess is contained in the cage for the most part (Thank you dollar store!) he's hardly nagged about it. He's wary of it, but he seems more fascinated now than anything (he got up to pee one night and actually went to check on them and showed me a picture of them breeding the next morning! heh! :lol: )

If you're not 100% serious about it and got a spare chameleon cage you could just keep them on the porch or somewhere outside, if they'd die or fail to breed it wouldn't be a big issue after all. With 5-6 hornworms it wouldn't be too bad, I personally just didn't wanna let over 20 hornworms go to waste (18 hatched currently, 13 of which are males! ).
Just would have to make sure the eggs couldn't escape (they are a pest after all).
We're even considering spreading the moths for display (and possibly sale) :lol: since I've wanted to get into butterfly spreading. May be a fun little hobby on top of that! (for that reason I've considered breeding luna month and such as well)

If you ever change your mind let me know! With proper precautions it's not THAT bad :lol: