Silkworms?

Hello! I'm a new mom to a lovely little dragon boy, and I was thinking of switching my beardie over to silkworms, as his staple feeder. Does anyone know where to get cheap silkworms? And what is the procedure on storing them? Can you freeze them and take out a few when you're ready to feed? Crickets have become extremely difficult for me to store, and I've been having to go to the pet store all the time to buy him more. Any ideas?
Thank you

They can be tough to get at times. If you want to hatch just a few at a time, you're best bet is to buy silkworm eggs and raise them on your own as needed. It's quite helpful if you have access to fresh mulberry leaves, but you can raise them on mulberry chow (available from vendors) if needed. I've ordered mine from Coastal Silkworms and had good luck in the past. I haven't raised them myself though. There is more info about raising them in this thread https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=222193&p=1740893

CooperDragon":nygsm13b said:

They can be tough to get at times. If you want to hatch just a few at a time, you're best bet is to buy silkworm eggs and raise them on your own as needed. It's quite helpful if you have access to fresh mulberry leaves, but you can raise them on mulberry chow (available from vendors) if needed. I've ordered mine from Coastal Silkworms and had good luck in the past. I haven't raised them myself though. There is more info about raising them in this thread https://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=222193&p=1740893

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Thank you! I'm a college student who lives in an apartment with 6 other girls.....so I can't exactly have roaches and crickets running around :lol: they would not be very happy....
That's why I am trying to find a healthy food option for my baby, but something that is very easy to store. Mealworms have been the easiest for me, because I can pop them right in my fridge, and take them out when it's feeding time, but he isn't eating them anymore. I'm just trying to find an easy feeder insect, that won't escape and is not too expensive. :/

It's too bad you can't have a roach colony since those are the cheapest in the long run. Great Lakes Hornworm sells hornworm pods (and there are similar silkworm pods) that include food so they are pretty simple to deal with. They aren't cheap if your dragon is eating a lot of bugs though. Black Solider Fly larvae are also a good option but they are pretty small so you may need a lot of them. They are cheaper than the hornworms and silks.

katieeee9865":2karkjtz said:

Does anyone know where to get cheap silkworms?

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"Cheap" is the challenge. So far, I haven't seen them for much less than a buck a piece (but that doesn't mean they can't be gotten more reasonably).

Have you tried super worms? Very similar to meal worms except they're larger, and you don't refrigerate them (it'll kill them).

There's a great big world of feeders out there. :wink:

MrSpectrum":372j6an0 said:

katieeee9865":372j6an0 said:

Does anyone know where to get cheap silkworms?

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"Cheap" is the challenge. So far, I haven't seen them for much less than a buck a piece (but that doesn't mean they can't be gotten more reasonably).

Have you tried super worms? Very similar to meal worms except they're larger, and you don't refrigerate them (it'll kill them).

There's a great big world of feeders out there. :wink:

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I was nervous to try superworms, because I'm not sure how to go about feeding that to my dragon. Do i cut it up? He's a pretty small guy he's only 6inches but he's so underweight, because I just cant get him to eat!

Still a bit small for supers in my opinion. Since he's so small I think black soldier fly larvae are a good bet. Try symtonbsf for an order and see how those go. They're pretty hands off in terms of care and are a healthy feeder option.

CooperDragon":dnaw19so said:

Still a bit small for supers in my opinion. Since he's so small I think black soldier fly larvae are a good bet.

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+1 BSFL

Sorry, I wasn't thinking about the lizard's size, but superworms do come in different sizes, from 1/2" to 1-3/4". Google: small superworms

YMMV

katieeee9865":24k819aq said:

He's a pretty small guy he's only 6inches but he's so underweight, because I just cant get him to eat!

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A lot of time temperatures and lighting plays a huge role in appetite. Do you have a thread where we've gone over your setup with you? If not we could do that here and just rule out any husbandry issues.

On topic though, for silkworms I highly suggest buying them as eggs and hatching them yourself. It's intimidating at first, but once you do it once you're a pro lol.

-Brandon

claudiusx":231badh9 said:

On topic though, for silkworms I highly suggest buying them as eggs and hatching them yourself. It's intimidating at first, but once you do it once you're a pro lol.

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Are there places that sell/ship fresh mulberry leaves? Where we lived previously, we had a HUGE mulberry tree in the back yard. The squirrels had EPIC battles in it, and I was constantly picking up twigs & branches. The dog also like lapping up the fallen berries. (She had a bit of a sweet tooth.)

IIRC, the tree used to get some kind of parasitic worms, but I don't think they were silkworms--not in this climate, anyway (we do get tent caterpillars in the ornamental cherry trees).

We don't have a mulberry tree in this house, and I haven't had reason (so far) to ask around the neighborhood... Something to stash away in the grey file... :wink:

Ebay sellers and maybe amazon sell leaves. It's best if you have access to a tree though. I too had a huge one in our backyard (well... a lot next to our yard.. )but weve since moved.

You can buy the mulberry chow that most places who sell silkworms also sell. It makes them more costly than using leaves, but still much cheaper than buying live if you can even find them.

Be warned though the chow stinks up your whole dang house when you cook it lol.

-Brandon

claudiusx":9k1txfk6 said:

Be warned though the chow stinks up your whole dang house when you cook it lol.

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I hear the same about beardiepoop... :roll:_____ :bleick:_____

Hi!
I was also looking for a way to feed my juvenile Beardie silkworms for cheap. So, I ordered 500+ Silkworm eggs from Mulberry Farms on 6/3 for $12.99 (plus $11 for 2-day shipping). They arrived super fast on 6/5 (I recommend the hold for pickup at the post office option so they don't cook in your mailbox if you're in a hot climate). I followed the directions on the MF website to hatch them. It was actually extremely easy. Fortunately for us, because our beardie's tank is in the smallest bedroom, the room was the PERFECT temperature for the eggs. (They recommend 80-85°. If your room is cooler than this, you might need an incubator.) By 6/11 we had teeny tiny worm hatchlings! We fed silkworm chow at first, since the hatchlings don't have very strong jaws. Once they got bigger, I switched them to fresh mulberry leaves (I'm actually very lucky... My parents have about 12 large mulberry trees on their 4 acre property.) Once they started eating the leaves, everything was easy-peasy. My biggest issue was the chow... It is sticky and you have to cook it a certain way and it smells bad and has to stay refrigerated once it's cooked. Plus the tiny hatchling worms would climb up on it and it was a total pain to CAREFULLY transfer them off. They would use silk to attach themselves to it as well. That was frustrating, lol.

What I did (which was a bit OCD, I fully admit ?) was to count out 50 of the worms into plastic shoeboxes I got at Walmart for $.88/each. So that part was very time consuming, counting out all the worms. But... I'm glad I did because I actually ended up with 850 worms! ? MF guarantees 500+. (They also had a 200+ option for $9.99 I believe). I did take the time to transfer the worms to fresh leaves multiple times per week when they were tiny, placing the worms onto the new leaves and into the clean shoebox with a cheap napkin underneath to catch their poo. If you're extremely busy, you probably wouldn't have to do this, just put fresh leaves in and let the worms migrate to them. Just be sure to dump the poo out every couple of days. I'm not sure if it would affect your survival rate though.

Of my 850 hatchlings, I'd guess 750 of them survived to full size. So ultimately I ended up with 750 silkworms for about $24. ? Plus I spent about $25 in materials (silkworm chow, shoe boxes, napkins) that I can reuse. I think it's VERY worth while if you're willing to put in a little time and effort. Just keep in mind, they won't be big enough to feed to your dragon until about 2 weeks after hatching (so about 3 weeks from when you place the order). So it's a bit of a long term commitment, but it really pays off. I LOVE Silkies because they don't stink, they keep in stackable plastic shoe boxes perfectly, and they're super healthy for my beardie. I wish you loads of luck and hope everything works out!
~Brandi

Thanks Brandi, that was super helpful!
Do they need to be put into smaller groups like you did?
I really like bsfl because they're essentially maintenance free, but I'm all for switching it up sometimes and keep reading about how great silkworms are for them. I just didn't want to pay those prices and was intimidated by reading that you have to cook food for them and clean the containers every day.

I don't think they have to be put into smaller groups like that, but I found it helpful in order to keep track of how many worms we had on an ongoing basis (since we had SO MANY). It also made for easier feeding & cleaning, as the more worms that were in a bucket, the faster they would chow through the leaves (and the more poop would build up). If you're feeding Silkworm chow though, that many worms would be pretty expensive to feed. I found that a box of 50 (2 week old) Silkies will eat about 6-8 large mulberry leaves 2x a day. In keeping them in smaller groups, I could add leaves in the AM, then clean out the poop and add more fresh leaves in the PM. Usually at night I'd stack the boxes next to my chair and clean them as I watched TV. I used cheap napkins on the bottom, placed fresh mulberry leaves on top of the napkin, then moved the worms from the dirty box to the clean box onto the fresh leaves. If a day was super busy, letting them go a day without cleaning the poop wasn't a huge deal when they were in the smaller groups. I'd just add more leaves and clean poop the next day. (They do nothing but eat and poop, so be prepared for lots of it!) The awesome thing about using the plastic shoe boxes is that when you're not using them for your worms, they nestle into a nice compact stack that doesn't take up a lot of room, or they can be repurposed for other uses. Currently I'm using mine for breeding my silk moths, which have hatched out of their silk cocoons and are now laying eggs for me. (We had so many worms that Snowflake couldn't eat them all before they cocooned up. I ended up with over 100 cocoons, so my current experiment is to see if I can cycle out some eggs on my own instead of having to buy them.)

I absolutely LOVE BSFL, and our Snowflake gets those regularly as well. (I just hate that they only last a couple of weeks at most before they start to pupate). Yes, they are probably the lowest maintenance feeder out there! I've been trying to create a BSFL colony but have not had near the success with that as I've had with Silkworms.

I also have been working on breeding/colonizing Hornworms. We let some Hornworms that grew too big to feed Snowflake pupate. They emerged as moths earlier this month, and have laid eggs that just hatched this week. Thus far I've got about 60 teeny tiny Hornworms, now I just have to see if I can get them to grow to feeder size. We shall see.

Wishing you lots of luck!

~Brandi