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.

Coming to an End.

Woke up yesterday morning, no silkworms or moths to attend to.
Felt a bit lost.
Today I spoke to my Second Son and he tells me that he has someone interested in taking the eggs to hatch next spring.
I am yet to find someone to take the 699 cocoons.
Before I find somewhere to send them off to I might experiment a little with some, see if i can unravel a bit of the silk.

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, Week 8

My aim for this blog is to post each day.
I have no camera at the moment.  I forgot it at my sister-in-law's house on Boxing Day, and I've been suffering from an extended-play influenza which is now in its third week.
The last thought on my mind today is silkworms.  Sorry to say.
Thank goodness only one, solitary, silkworm languishes on, waiting to spin its cocoon, eating very little and therefore not needing much attention from me.
All of the family have been visiting over the Christmas holiday period and only one adult child remains and plans to return to the city tomorrow.
Hopefully this means I can fade into the woodwork for a few days in an effort to fully recover.
Let's see if cocooned pupae can wait for my full recovery before metamorphosing and emerging as moths.
There is much work to be done before eggs begin to be laid.

Day Forty Nine

Can report that today, one silkworm caterpillar remains.
Only one caterpillar left to spin a cocoon.
Hallelujah!

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 Six

A quiet day on the home front.
Only a few silkworms left to cocoon.
A bit of relief at Christmas and so grateful!
Hope your Christmas day was all you wanted it to be.

Day Forty Five

Today we discovered a silkworm cocoon on the skirting board, behind the dinning room dresser.

Hope we don't find any more surprises!

Day Forty Four

Panic stations late yesterday when I discovered that ants have been gathering in one of the tanks.
No, no, no!
It seems that one of the silkworms had escaped and cocooned beneath a tank sitting  directly on the floor and when I moved the tank it sort of squashed the caterpillar.
Death equals ANTS!
So what to do? What to do?
Cleaned up as best I could, mopped the floor around the general area and I think we're now back to safe stations again.
What also attracts the ants is the messy fluid that is excreted just before the silkworms begin to spin their cocoons.
It can dampen cardboard if that's what the silkworms are on. Some of mine are now in shoe boxes and I have been leaving them directly on the floor...a big no- no!  No longer!

Yesterday afternoon I also received a telephone call from a panic stricken grand mother who wanted to purchase silkworms for her two year old grand daughter.
The child's mother's been reading her the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the two year old has asked Santa for a caterpillar for Christmas.
I have been advertising the silkworms for sale on Gumtree and although I've had about eighty hits, this was my first call.  The serendipity is that the family lives only a few kilometres away and this afternoon Grandma Nanette  went home with ten of my smallest caterpillars to give to her grand daughter for Christmas.  How sweet!

Day Forty Two

Today has been a day of capturing escapees.

And watching other silkworms spin gossamer webs to build their cocoon.

Day Forty One

My biggest fear at the moment is that one of the silkworms is going to get stepped on!
I came home this afternoon to find five or six of the little critters creeping around on the floor, probably having dropped off the edge of their tank in a bid to find a spot to anchor their cocoon!

Spinning is proceeding happily.

The silkworms make just as much noise spinning as they do eating!

Did you know that the length of silk thread produced to make one cocoon exceeds six hundred metres?

Day Thirty Eight

The adult silkworm larvae now have a new type of condominium.

About twenty cocoons are being spun at the moment.

A close up of the latest cocoon.  Inside, the silkworm is still spinning away.

The adult silkworm, preparing to spend the next few days spinning.

This is the typical arch of the silkworm as it makes ready to build its cocoon.

We ran out of leaves today and Mr Honey Pie had to make a special trip down to Nepean River's Tench Reserve to collect more.  He brought back five shopping bags full.  One and a half have already been devoured by the ravenous silkworms.

I think the most important job to growing silkworms is keeping the tanks clean.

This has been a constant task over the past two days.

The amount of frass is astronomical!  

Silkworms can survive without food for up to one week, but if their housing is allowed to go mouldy, then that could be the end of them.

Day Thirty Seven

Slick, sleek,slender -
Incognito.
Likened to an unheralded
Knight- in-
Waiting.
Opulence found in the attire in which you
Revel - a silken
Mantle to nature's wonder.

d.m.vaarwerk. 16.12.2011

Day Thirty Five

Today's post is brought to you by the letter S and the number 6.5!

I'm still feeling a bit under the weather today.
My tummy is still sensitive and I'm only eating lightly.

On the other hand, the silkies are spurring on.

The fellows below are measuring in at approximately 6.5cm in length and 1cm in thickness.  Others are are measuring in at almost 8cm.

onthesilkwormroad.blogspot.com

 

Isn't the creamy wonderful?

The cream silkworms are definitely a minority.  Perhaps this is what makes them seem more attractive to me.

I found an interesting article about changing the colour of silkworms which in turn changes the colour of the silk:

Australian Geographic.

Oh the possibilities.

I've listed the silkworms for sale on Gumtree.  The ad will be visible tomorrow.

Unless I take up sericulture  as a full time activity I panic to think what I'm going to do with around six hundred cocoons and the resulting moths and eggs! 

Feel free to contact me through this blog if you would like to purchase some.

The going rate is $5.00 for 15 silkworms.  Pick up only and I'm in the Blue Mountains.

Thanks for visiting!

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 Thirty One

Today I took the opportunity of parting with some more of the silkworms at our local Crop and Swap.  Four more batches in fact.  That is between eighty and one hundred of them.

But looking at what's left, no one would even know.

And yes, I've added a fourth level to the condominium.

Day Thirty

The largest of the silkworms is weighing in at around two grams, its length six centimetres.
I'm feeling quite concerned that the larvae are getting so large that they may begin to squash each other.
Because of this concern I'm contemplating adding another level to the condominium to give them more room to spread out.

About fifty more silkworms left home late yesterday, to replace the ones lost by one of my customers.
She revealed to me that she had a Glade Air Freshener in the same room as the silkworms and that this is what may have caused their demise.
I have received a message from her today telling me that this new batch is thriving.  They are residing in her daughter's bedroom as opposed to the kitchen.

Day Twenty Nine, Week 5

Silkworm Condominium