Ground Hog Day

The cycle is complete.
To my surprise I discovered that between 20-30 silkworm eggs  have hatched!
I can only attribute this to the fact that we have suddenly had some warm weather and that the way I have left the eggs I have unintentionally created an incubator.
Luckily, I found the new hatched silkworms very early and have been able to rehouse them and provide them with fresh leaves off our mulberry tree.

The rest of the unhatched eggs have been refrigerated until I can get them to their new owner.

Above is a photograph of  our mulberry tree.

It's not very large.

The chicken wire netting is to prevent possums from climbing into the tree and eating all the berries and to stop them from stripping the tree bare of leaves.

Six hundred and ninety nine silk cocoons.

Day Fifty Five

I don't have a camera!  It's very annoying.
I left the camera at my sister-in-law's house on Boxing Day and have had to resort to using my mobile telephone (which is not very good for taking photographs).
Today I have three things to report:
1.  My daughter fed her silkworms frozen leaves and returned home to find that the silkworms had turned green! She quickly removed the leaves from their tank and gave them fresh leaves.  Will they recover?  It remains to be seen.
2.  One of my silkworms  has failed to spin a proper cocoon.  It simply crept into a spot beneath some silk from other silkworms' cocoons.  I initially thought that the silkworm had failed to spin because it had died.  What I can see now is that the caterpillar is actually metamorphosing!  I will take photographs as soon as my camera has returned home.  Apparently a silkworm does  not need a cocoon for metamorphoses.   
3.  I found a cocoon in the garage...so similar in shape and size to a silkworm cocoon but a bit different in colour.  I've become so much more aware of cocoons now that I've watched hundreds of my own silkworms spin a cocoon.

Day Fifty One

Fed the one lone silkworm a few leaves off our depleted mulberry tree.
This last silkworm seems very reluctant to move on to the next stage of its cycle.
Someone in the Blue Mountains posted a picture of their liquid amber tree which thinks it's autumn already and its leaves have turned all autumnal colours.
Wonder what effect this has on the silkworms and their development.
This December is officially the coolest December on record in fifty years!



Here's another picture I've found of Alice and the Blue Caterpillar.  Hope you like it.

Day Forty Eight

The silkworms continue to spin cocoons.
Only six or seven remain and are yet to spin.
Mulberry leaf feeding is no longer a first priority.
Mr Honey Pie has had four days off work over the Christmas holiday break and therefore not able to top up our supply daily from the usual source.
Thank goodness we are not desperate for leaves!  Today, the remaining silkworms have barely made an impact on two large Mulberry leaves fed to them this morning.  It will be a relief to not to have to worry about where their next supply of leaves is coming from.
Once all the cocoons have been spun I'd like to count the number of cocoons.
Of course I'll be quite short of the three thousand cocoons needed to make half a kilogram of silk!
The next challenge will be housing hundreds of moths and providing them with a place to lay their eggs.  Each female moth will deposit around 400 eggs.  They will only be viable if fertilized.

The silkworms at maturity, are around ten thousand times heavier than when they hatched.

Day Forty

The colours of the cocoons are many and varied.

The one above is almost white.

More and more of the silkworms are spinning their cocoons.

It won't be long now before they've all done so.

Some of the smaller silkworms have been separated from the adult silkworms because I don't think that they're capable of competing for the food and were at risk of suffocating.

All continue to thrive.

It's almost a full time job keeping up the feeding, the transferring and the cleaning.

Once more I've got Mr Honey Pie to thank for keeping up the supply of mulberry leaves!

Day Thirty Four

I've been stricken by a stomach bug.
Mr Honey Pie has been the main carer of the silkworms today.
Thanks so much Honey...where would we be without you!
Thanks too for the bags and bags of leaves you have picked for the silkies!
Due to my illness - this is it for today.
Hopefully everything will be back on track tomorrow.

Day Thirty Three

Day Thirty Two

The silkworms are now taking up a great portion of my time.
It seems weird to think that such a benign insect can make an impact on one's life.
Last year, when I had fifteen of them to care for, they made a much smaller impression on my days.
My original intention for making the purchase of fifteen silkworms was to give them to my Grand Daughter because she is unable to have a pet.  She lives in a tenanted house and no pets are allowed.
Are silkworms classed as pets?  Would a goldfish be classed as a pet...?   She has had more than one goldfish but each one perished so that idea was passed up.

This year she's been given another fifteen or so of her own but I have hundreds more to contend with.
Believe it or not...mine are thriving much better than her fifteen.

Twelve caterpillars left home today...up the mountain they went.  But once more they've hardly made a dent in the numbers!

I ran out of mulberry leaves tonight and had to resort to picking leaves off our tiny little tree...which I've been saving in case of emergencies.
Later on Mr Honey Pie brought home two plastic shopping bags stuffed with leaves.
What can I say?  He saved the day!

Day Twenty Eight

By the size of the holes in this leaf it 

 seems that silkworm caterpillars are not the only caterpillars that like mulberry leaves.

I found the above little fellow on my supply of leaves that have been stored in the refrigerator.

It has been chilled for something like three days, and survived.

I put the caterpillar and the leaf outside.

I'm hoping that the little creature can fend for itself.

My other find today was a silkworm in a smaller container that I  had been storing the larvae in ready to be picked up.

I thought  it was empty.

I'd say that the silkworm had been in the container for something like a week.  

It too survived!  

If there was food for in the container who can say?  There was none today.

It has now joined it's brothers and sisters in one of the three tanks I've got going to house them all.

Day Twenty Six

Today a woman from further up the mountains messaged me to say that all the silkworms she had purchased from me have died!

Shock!

I can't imagine why they have perished.  The cooler temperatures may have been a cause and since she's at a higher altitude it's of course even cooler where she is.

I have offered her a refund or to replace her silkworms.  She wants to have them replaced but I can't help feeling that it's a waste of time and silkworm lives since the real cause isn't know.

Meanwhile my many hundreds of silkworms continue to thrive.  They are consuming mulberry leaves at a rate of knots and I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to keep up the supply.

Mr Honey Pie is bringing two bags home each day and this is barely enough to last twenty four hours.

I may have to find a second supply as my mangy little tree won't do much to feed them.

Moulting continues too.  

Day Twenty

Feeding time in the tank.

9.16 a.m. 

9.17:30 a.m. 

9.21 a.m. 

9.26 a.m. 

9.38 a.m.

Day Nineteen

The silkworms are eating mulberry leaves at record speed.

They can't wait to turn into moths.

I can only imagine that my Grand Daughter has been inspired by our rearing of silkworms to have drawn and cut out the above images without any prompting from the grown-ups in her life.

The silkworms continue to grow, I continue to feed and keep clean their house.

Part of the cleaning process involves removing the silkworms' droppings.

The proper term for silkworm droppings is 'frass'.

Adding frass to your garden beds is said to aid flowering plants to bloom.

It is important to keep the silkworms' house clean to prevent mould growing and causing  the silkworms to become sick.

The silkworms' house should be cleaned out at least every two days.

Not only should the frass be removed, but any dried up leaves as well.

Day Eighteen

As far as the silkworms are concerned, things are not that different today from how they were yesterday.

A lot of moults have been left behind on the old leaves.  The silkworms are growing.

The rhythm of feeding, transferring from one tank to the other, cleaning thanks and feeding again, is running smoothly.

Weekend visitors have been amazed by the sight of hundreds of silkworms in a feeding frenzy.

My Grand Daughter has enjoyed placing fresh leaves into the tanks and watching the silkworms devouring the them.

The rate at which the mulberry leaves are being consumed has increased noticeably.

Our son M reluctantly took some silkworms home with him in the hope that friends might be interested in having some of their own.

Despite the numbers that have been sold or given away, the quantity does not seem to have been diminished at all.

My Grand Daughter slept over last night.

This morning to continue the theme of sericulture we did some Mulberry leaf paintings.  

It all seems to be about mulberry leaves at the moment.

This picture was painted with mulberry leaves loaded with water colours. 

Same picture edited in PhotoImpressions and then Picasa.

Day Fifteen, Week 3

We've had 11.5 mm of rain in the past twenty four hours.

The temperature is still below 13 oC and humidity is now 91%.

Heating is still on inside the house.

Silkworms continue to thrive. 

Larger silkworms are now 1.75cm in length.

You can see from the leaves above that the silkworms do a good job of finishing off the leaves.

I am noticing though, that they don't seem to like all the leaves equally.

Younger, less leathery leaves are their preference.

Tomorrow, three batches of fifteen silkworms will go to new homes.

Originally, I thought I had about 300 silkworms but now I'm doing rough calculations at over 400!

If you live in the Blue Mountains N.S.W. Australia and would like to purchase some feel free to contact me via this blog!

The going price is 15 silkworms for $5.

I understand that in the pet shops the silkworms are going for $1.50 each.

In the above photograph you can now see the various sizes of the silkworms.

The largest one on the right measure around 17mm.

The stripes on the silkworms skin is also becoming more and more obvious.

Because of the stripes these silkworms are called Zebra Silkworms.

Not all silkworms have stripes.

Some are a creamy white without any stripes.

This does not mean that they do not belong to the same species, rather it's a genetic variation, just like one brother may have brown eyes, and another brother blue.

Day Fourteen

Today, I sold three batches of fifteen silkworms.

Persistence is paying off.

I have been listing them on a community facebook page so I have sold four batches through this listing.

Because the weather has remained cool (it's 13.6 oC outside tonight) the silkworms do become less active.  I have switched the heating on so they will be alright.

The two plastic shopping bags full of mulberry leaves that Mr Honey Pie picked and which I posted about yesterday are almost gone.

My Dear Daughter took some for her silkworms while mine have continued on their feeding frenzy despite the cooler weather.

DD has commented on how Grand Daughter is showing responsibility by for her pets by feeding the silkworms herself.  She is only four years old.

By being responsible for her fifteen pets, she can demonstrate that she might actually be ready to have her own larger furry pet...like a cat or a dog.

By the way, the silkworm larvae are no longer furry.

Their skin is smooth now and are a much lighter colour.

Some of the larvae are moulting again.  Second or third moult?  I'm not sure,  but probably third.

The fourth moult is the final one and after the fourth moult, the silkworm, once mature, begins to spin a cocoon using a silk filament.

The silk filament is actually the silkworm's saliva.

The next stage, that is when the cocoon is formed, is called the pupa stage.

Day Thirteen

Thank you to Mr Honey Pie for being such a generous gatherer!

We now have a third source of mulberry leaves because Mr Honey Pie has discovered a mulberry tree growing in the yard where he works.

Just look at all those shiny green leaves.

This means we don't have to go to Tench Reserve alongside the Nepean River to gather a supply of leaves.  But it's reassuring to know that the supply is there if need be.

I'm finding the tanks a little easier to clean now.

Having two tanks is much more convenient than one.

With two tanks I can transfer all the silkworms and the leaves they're feeding on, to one tank while the other is being cleaned.

While I'm cleaning the tank, I place as many fresh leaves as I can into the other tank to entice as many silkworms onto the new leaves.

When the cleaned tank is ready I can then place the silkworm-laden leaves into the clean tank.

I am getting a bit of a better pattern and routine to the care of the worms.

Now that they are larger, they are also easier to handle.

One of the worms measured in at 1.5 cm today.

The temperature dropped to around 17 oC overnight.  

We've had cloud and rain so I'm hoping that it doesn't get much colder than this.

Otherwise I'll have to put the heating on again.

Day Twelve

Sericulture is the cultivation of silkworms for silk.
Myths and legends surround the origins of silk.
The story I like most is how almost five thousand years ago, the Chinese Emperor asked his wife to find out what was eating his mulberry trees.
On the trees, the emperor's wife, Hsi-Ling-Shi, found white grubs eating away at the leaves.  She thought that she could destroy the insects by dropping the cocoons into boiling water.
What she found  was that the hot water dissolved enough of the 'glue' holding the cocoon together to reveal a continuous thread that she was eventually able to spin to make thread thick enough to weave cloth.
Hsi-Ling-Shi persuaded her husband, Emperor Huang-Ti to grow a grove of mulberry trees for her so that she could cultivate enough cocoons to weave more silk cloth.
This is how Hsi-Ling-Shi became the very first sericulturalist.
Silk production was to remain a guarded secret by the Chinese for three thousand years.
Today, silkworms cannot survive in the wild and are fully domesticated.
The silkworm moth cannot fly and would fall easily fall prey to predators.

Emperor Huang-Ti (Yellow Emperor)

Source

Day Eleven

Caring for fifteen silkworms is MUCH easier than caring for three hundred plus!

Last year I bought fifteen silkworms at the markets, for $5.00.  Fifteen silkworms doesn't seem many.  Somehow I lost three of these silkworms, I'm not sure what happened to them.  Out of the remaining twelve silkworms all managed to reach the spinning stage, and eventually we had just as many moths.

Not all the moths lay eggs, only the females.  The eggs were refrigerated until spring and the result is what you see in this blog.   I realise now, that fifteen is probably a good number to keep as pets.  As the larvae grow and come closer to spinning cocoons, the more ravenous they become and need an endless supply of mulberry leaves.   Last year I ran out of leaves towards the end, but luckily I was able to find some at a relatives house which is quite a distance away.  Since then I have found a closer supply, besides the one little tree we have in the garden.  How many will be needed for hundreds of the little creatures?

Sometimes it's necessary to transfer some of the larvae from one leaf to another...they can become quite attached to an old leaf, even when it's all shrivelled up and lifeless.

I have found that the easiest way to transfer the silkworms is by scooping them up gently using a side way stroke with a soft water colour paintbrush.

The larger silkworms are now measuring in at 12mm in length.

I'm finding that the insects are much more active early morning.

This seems to be the best time to transfer them from old leaves to new ones when it becomes necessary to clean out the tanks.

I spread fresh leaves over the old and as the silkworms crawl onto the new leaves I transfer the leaves and silkworms into the second freshly cleaned tank.

Before I throw any of the old leaves out, I put them into what I'm calling a 'holding tank' with one fresh leaf (to attract any silkworms I may have missed) for twenty four hours.

Day Ten

Warmer weather means more active silkworms.
More active silkworms means hungrier silkworms.
Hungrier silkworms means more leaves needed to feed hungrier silkworms.
More eating of leaves means faster growing silkworms.
Faster growing silkworms means ramping up feeding from two feeds to three feeds a day.

Never feed silkworms wet leaves.  Wet leaves can make silkworms sick.  In the first instar, the tiny insects may even drown if the leaves are quite wet.

Pesticide free mulberry leaves are a MUST.  Feeding silkworms leaves treated with pesticide will kill them.

If a tree is not available close by, freshly picked leaves from a friend or neighbour's tree can be kept in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to a week.

This is what I have done because our mulberry tree is quite small.

When I feed them with leaves from the fridge, I have to wipe them dry because they become quite damp from condensation.

My silkworms seem to prefer younger leaves.

Some leaves they totally ignore.  Other leaves they strip bare.

I think they are picky!

Day Seven

The eldest of the silkworms are now seven days old.

By now some of these older brothers and sisters will have become too big for their skins; literally.

To cope with this situation the little critters moult, that is, they leave their old skin behind.

The time between each moult is called an instar.

Some of the silkworms have moulted twice since hatching last Thursday.

You can see some old skins above, they look like shrivelled up silkworms.

The first time you see this you might think that the silkworms are dead and take you by surprise, which is what happened to me.

Then I remembered that they shed their skins, just like a snake.

Silkworms moult four times, there are five instars during this stage.

The first stage is the wait for the eggs to hatch (incubation).  The egg stage is called Ova.

The second stage is the silkworm stage and is called Larva.

During the Larva stage, the silkworms eat and eat and eat.

Silkworms eat mulberry leaves so if you want to keep silkworms as a pet, then you need a mulberry tree.

The second thing you will need is a tank or box with good airflow to keep them in.

The third thing you will need is some time each day to feed them and to clean up their house.