Breeding Silkworms?

[LittleRepieye]

Well I'm trying my first hand at breeding my own feeders. I ordered some silkworms last week and Draco goes crazy for them and I know there good for him. I still blend them with phoenix worms for a diet and salad. When I ordered them I had 4 in cocoon stage and took them out and placed them on a paper towel in a small box. I have been doing some research and watching videos on here stages, but I would love some first hand advice from breeders I'm not sure if my first attempt will be successful but later down the line I would like to be able to breed them.

A few Questions:

Should my cocoons be at a certain temperature? Ive never seen are house go below 64

If they hatch and we get eggs should they be at a certain temperature to hatch too?

Thanks for he help

 

[jon21388]

goodluck with the breeding.

 

[Gail]

The warmer the cocoons are, they faster they will hatch. They really should be kept above 70 if possible. The eggs will hatch at 70 but do better at 80-85, I use a incubator and the worms stay in it until they are at least a inch.
You might want to put down plain white paper or butcher paper instead of paper towel. When you see two moths stuck butt to butt, cover them with a clear plastic cup so they stay contained to lay their eggs. If you don't contain them, they will scatter the eggs everywhere. You can then cut the paper that has the eggs stuck to it into a nice little circle. I've always use large deep petri dish for hatching and being able to keep the eggs on a small piece of paper makes it a lot easier.

 

[LittleRepieye]

Thank you very much, I don't have a incubator at the moment so ill buy one for next time, but thanks for the info, ill wait and see what happens

 

[xmikeyx1026]

Silkworms are not easy to breed so if you fail the first time try again and again. I am now having thousands of these things at one time and will lose like 1-2 per every thousand. I am willing to help you with any questions you might have. This is for the incubator it's good to have one but you don't need if you can maintain a temp of 72-80 when worms and 80-85 when cocoons I use a heater with a temp gage on it.

 

[LittleRepieye]

Well I've got my first few moths that have been hatching over the last 3 days, I currently have 4 and 3 cocoon's left. I put them into a smaller container, but still none have wanted to attach but I'm not sure if I just got unlucky and got all males or females. But I'm proud that I actually got them to hatch out of there cocoons so it's all a learning experience, I never tried to breed anything before.

A Few Pics of my moths:

 

[xmikeyx1026]

looks like you got all females there lol. Males are a lot smaller then females

 

[lizzywoodwardBD]

Females will have a little thing going in and out of there behind and the males will have a little flap that goes over the top of their behind. It kind of looks like you have all males but it is hard to tell. If you have a male and female no matter where they are they will smell each other a couple feet away and go towards each other and lock up right away.

Good luck, i got eggs but they won't hatch for me.

 

[LittleRepieye]

yea it's been like 3 days and still nothing, I'm hopping another one hatches and is the opposite. hehe! No new hatch lings today though.

 

[LittleRepieye]

I got lucky and the last two silkworm cocoon's hatched and turned out to be female and saw what you guys where talking about. They had dropped allot of eggs. but allot of them didn't look fertilized because they where white eggs mostly. I decided to keep the eggs and see what happens. I don't have a incubator or anything so I wasn't sure if room temp would be warm enough, but I looked in there dish and most had hatched. I gave them some food and they all ran to it, I'm so proud it worked

here's some baby's!

I got another 12+ cocoons waiting to hatch now, so I'm buying a big tub tomorrow to put all the baby's in, with some newspaper.

 

[LittleRepieye]

I just wanted to update on how my baby silkworms are doing. I decided to just get another critter keeper to keep the babies in. I had the adults in a tub, but noticed they where dying allot quicker, I don't think the tub was as well ventilated then the critter keeper, I keep them alive pretty long in that and once my babies got past the hatching worm(black little worm) I haven't had any casualties since then. I have two more cups of eggs on the way as well

 

[Awesome]

Are silkworms difficult to breed? It looks much more complicated than crickets or Dubia.

 

[LittleRepieye]

honestly this is my first time breeding them and I haven't had a problem at all. I think the only reason I lost half in the beginning was I didn't put enough food in at first and they couldn't find the rest that the others swarmed over. But haven't lost one since. I just let them do there thing after they hatch put them in a cup with some paper for the eggs and wait and then feed them when they hatch right away and that's about it till there about the size you want.

 

[Gail]

Congrats on the babies, silkies really aren't hard once you get a system down. Do you know that you can refrigerate the eggs so they don't hatch right away?

 

[lauraj1055]

Congrats to you! It sounds complicated by just reading this thread.. Mine love Dubia, and weren't so much into the silkworms, and anyone can breed Dubia without even trying.. :lol: