silkworm eggs started hatching, too late to chill rest ?

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kingofnobbys

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I left the older lot of eggs laid by the 1st few moths from my 1st 2016 batch of your worms too long (while waiting for the last of the eggs laid to change colour from yellow) and I've now got dozens of baby worms that hatched overnight, hatching sooner than I expected them to).

Is it too late to put the unhatched eggs in sealed containers and into the warmest part of my fridge (about 5oC in the door) ?

or will they be too far advanced and close to hatching now to chill and make dormnant ?
 

kingofnobbys

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Bit the bullet, cut the sheets of scot-towelling the eggs were laid on into smaller pieces containing only grey eggs (a few yellow ones will be sacrificed) and so now about 60% of the eggs are in small glass sample bottles , lids on , so airtight ,and the bottles are in the fridge now.
The last of the silkworm moths (all males) went to Peppa and Toothless while still alive and didn't last long.

Can't be bothered advertising my silkworm eggs and trying to sell them.. Though I did consider maybe advertising to swap 400 eggs or so for a pair of captive bred baby eastern water skinks . Might do that later if I see any advertised.

Took great pains to ensure I gently transferred all hatched worms ( darned tiny !!! and hard or see sometimes against a thick mass of grey colored eggs ), from the paper to "young mulberry leafs" on fresh scot-towel in a f10ed (sterilised) 1.5L Clearview food storage tub. Sealed up with a sheet of Gladwrap to stop the tiny worms from crewing out the air holes in the lid and to keep bugs like tiny ants , baby roaches and baby spiders out (having a baby huntsman spider plague in my house right now .... ). Found mother spider last night and evicted her outside using a broom - tried not to hurt her.

Ran out of clean/sterilised sample bottles , so F10ed and cleaned out 8 more bottles (that were stashed from last time I raised silkworms from eggs) this evening , will probably wind up with about 90% of the eggs in the fridge tomorrow. The rest can hatch so I'll have more worms for Peppa and Toothless in particular that will be big enough to start using as feeder insects in about a month.
 

kingofnobbys

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Checked the temperature of the silkworm egg bottles in the "old fridge" in the kitchen (stored in a takeaway tub in the lower drink rack in the door.... 1.5oC ..... this worried me so I took one bottle of eggs out and let it return to room temperature overnight (27oC), this morning I found a few baby worm crawling about inside the bottle so I think the rest are fine.

Moved the silkworm egg bottles to the new fidge (in the spare room) , about 5.5oC in the door.

Got maybe 500 baby worms busily turning young mulberry leafs into skeletons now.

Got my first cocoon in the new batch of silkworms.... here we go again.... going to be hard pressed to get the beardies and BTs to eat all the remaining silkworms before I wind up with another 50 - 80 cocoons.
 

kingofnobbys

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My baby silkworms are now about 7 days old (between 5 and 7 days old mostly) and denuding 5 mulberry leafs per day between then (about 400 - 500 ?? worms I guess) and are now about 10mm long.

If I had baby water skinks up to about 4 months old , or baby bluetongues or hatchling beardies (in their first few weeks of age) , I think they would now be ideal size to use as the primary staple feeder insect.
Should be big enough to start to use as feeders for Peppa and Toothless in the next week I think (about 15mm - 20mm long).
 

kingofnobbys

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Will be starting to use my silkworms that came from eggs laid by my first batch of 2016 silkworms' moths from next week , they are now nearly as long as mealworms, so large enough to be OK for Peppa and Toothless to eat.

I have now moved the small silkworms from a 1.5L Clearview Tub to a 4L Clearview Tub, I am no longer sealing the tub with GladWrap as they are now too large to excape through the ventilation / air holes in the lid.

So that's 14 days of growth using fresh mulberry leaves from when they started hatching til now.
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
Original Poster
Perfect size to give to Peppa and Toothless this morning. They LOVED them !!

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size
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in 4L tub
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CooperDragon

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
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They look really healthy! It seems so much less messy to feed them the leaves instead of chow.
 

kingofnobbys

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CooperDragon":262gm8ht said:
They look really healthy! It seems so much less messy to feed them the leaves instead of chow.

I've raised silkworms both ways , you get the same amount of poo , but the chow being moist tends to promote more mould in the worm tub no matter how well ventilated the tub is.

I take the worms and the uneaten bits of leaf out every morning and remove the poo and any dead worms ( sometimes they suffocate while shedding when another worm crawls over them , it disrupts the shed and they can't get it off ---> dead worm.

New scot towel lining goes in , and I use the denuded bits of leaf as spacer packing for good air flow and ventilation between 3 or 4 layers of fresh leafs and disperse the worms onto each layer of leafs.

I find there is less wastage with leafs than with chow, the worms will still nibble a leaf that's a bit dry, but wont touch dried chow shreds.

I prefer leaves if I can get them. I have chow in powder from on hand if I need it, and some ready made (by me) chow sausages in the fridge wrapped in gladwrap (keeps for weeks like that).
 

CooperDragon

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I just had most of my silks die off. Their container got moldy and a lot of them shriveled away. Common problem I have with them. I need to work on building a bigger/better enclosure for them. Something well ventilated and easy to clean. I'm going to offer less food - in smaller batches as well. I'll try the leaves if I can get them, but they seem tough to come by in my area, especially in winter.
 

kingofnobbys

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CooperDragon":1drf9296 said:
I just had most of my silks die off. Their container got moldy and a lot of them shriveled away. Common problem I have with them. I need to work on building a bigger/better enclosure for them. Something well ventilated and easy to clean. I'm going to offer less food - in smaller batches as well. I'll try the leaves if I can get them, but they seem tough to come by in my area, especially in winter.

I find Décor TellFresh clear food containers work well.

I start my worms off (as eggs) in a 1.5L TellFresh , lined with scottowel, lid on (if the lid is one I've ventilated with holes using a soldering iron I seal by placing gladwrap under the lid) works well until they get about 2 weeks old and need more space and more food.
Key I find is to take the lid off for while each day to let the contents ventilate and dry, and I remove the poos each day and don't leave any leaf remnants that look the slightest bit white and fury in the tub (sure to kill the worms ,especially when they really little).
I upgrade to a 4.5L TellFresh tub with a ventilated lid (soldering iron used to make LOTS of holes in the lid) when they are about 2 weeks old. I feed the worms about lunchtime , remove them and remove old scottowel lining and poos and most the denuded leafs (I keep some to add some structure and keep the fresh leafs in layers apart). I still loose a few worms (mostly failed sheds).

If I was raising a 1000 or more worms I'd up to a 10L Tellfresh tub.

I had mass die offs too when I was using chow, I think this is because
- the chow has more moisture in it and lots of it is wasted (not eaten when it starts to go hard and dry)
- the worms are forced to come in closer contact with each other, if any are infected , they spread the virus/bacteria/fungal spores to the healthy worms.

I found chow was more successful if I made small batches of cooked chow up (maybe 40g of powder) at a time, made it into long sausages wrapped in gradwrap while still hot and plyable. Chilled til needed. Keeps for several weeks once cooked and chilled if kept wrapped.

Cut sections off the ends as needed and placed between two sheets of baking paper or thick plastic and rolled it as flat and thin as I can (1 - 2mm is good) and then fed the chow to the worms as sheets (kinda like leaves to the worms).
 

kingofnobbys

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First cocoon from my silkworms that came from my own eggs.

About 30 worms left now. Doubt I'll feed them all to the beardies before they pupate as they are all getting very big now.
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
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CooperDragon":stvcdprs said:
Might be good to let them be and wait for another generation.

Got a bottle of eggs out of the fridge yesterday, waiting for them to hatch.

No doubt , I'll wind up with a bunch of cocoons in week or 2 from the worms I have.
 

mommacude

Hatchling Member
Silly question: what are sample jars? Are they the little glass jars that are brown and used for essential oils?
 
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