Nutritional benefits of FRESH mulberry leaves

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kingofnobbys

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OK ,
Spring now and I've noticed my little white mulberry tree sapling (planted it as a seedling in a 40cm selfwatering Décor pot a couple of summers ago, now stands about 4ft tall) is covered with nice green leaves. Yay .... perfect for baby just hatched silkworms.

So I went hunting on GumTree and scored about 80 very large full grown (starting to pupate) silkworms and a few bags of fresh hicks mulberry leaves from a lady who lives near Botany Bay , too far to drive for my liking so I paid to have them sent to be by express post (just arrived !!!).

The plan is to let nearly all of them form cocoons and let the moths get busy laying eggs, I'll chill most the eggs to make sure I'm well stocked and can hatch a batch of silkworms when ever I need them, and I'll likely blanch some of the big silkworms and freeze them as well some / most of the new stock of leaves (I expect I'll have most the leaves left at the end 2 weeks).

In hunting I found lots of folks are selling silkworms , their eggs, cocoons, and fresh mulberry leaves right now (here in the eastern states of Australia) and one place is promoting the leaves as great food for prawns, crayfish, fish, yabbys, etc and have posted some info about the nutritional benefit of mulberry leaves so I though this is hard to find info and worth sharing :

Mulberries leaves have a wide range of beneficial vitamins and minerals which include Vitamin A, B1, B2 and minerals such as Magnesium, Zinc, Iron. They also contain sodium and potassium. All these combine to create a healthy meal for your Shrimp, whether they be Red Cherry, NQ Algae, Amano, Crystal Red or Black King Kong Panda's. Feeding Mulberry Leaves to your shrimp will help in the molting process and help them build a new shell. Mulberry leaves may also get your shrimp breeding a lot quicker.


Nutrient Analysis:


Protein: 23%

Carbohydrate: 43%

Fat: 4%

Fibre: 26%
and a more detailed analysis I found http://www.fao.org/livestock/agap/frg/lrrd/lrrd12/2/yao122.htm


This is the analysis for white mulberry leaves from a study http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/wrs/article/viewFile/196/183
4nght.gif

indicates a dry basis Ca/P = 2.3 which is pretty good.

I'll be including mulberry leaves in my beardie's diets , assuming hicks mulberry leaves are similar chemistry , and not toxic - I've raised several generations of silkworms on them and fed the worms to my lizards with no ill-effects .

Any one care to comment on the above and the use of hicks mulberry (black mulberry) leaves in a lizard's salad ?
 

AHBD

BD.org Sicko
Excellent info ! I have a large mulberry tree in my yard and fed the leaves to my dragons for many years. All my dragons, from baby to adult would eat them....they do prefer the younger, more tender leaves but will eat the larger ones as well. I always take out the spine or the veins of the larger leaves, just like taking off the harder stems of the greens we use. Mulberry leaves are very nutritious, and have a very good protein in them. An under-used source of food, it should be added to the beautiful dragons list of approved foods I do believe.
 
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