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Sunday 18 May 2014

How Many Silkworms Do You Get From 100 Eggs?

Reasonable question?  I thought it was quite a silly question actually!  I know they always send more eggs than you've ordered because some of them won't be viable, but I stopped counting at 600!!  And I'm pretty sure I've got more than 800 now.  Someone needs to go back to school!

Anyway, here's an update photo :-


They're still quite small, but these have obviously gone through their first stage of skin-shedding and are now in their "second instar" - you can see that they're a different colour, much lighter with a whitish head and small black face.  They're eating much more now, and by the time they've finished with this leaf it will look like a piece of lace with holes everywhere.  When they get bigger they'll eat the lot!

My mulberry tree is quite big now (10 years old), but I'm quite worried that I'll run out of leaves before this lot reach maturity.  My neighbour has a large mulberry tree in his wood, but it's quite tall and difficult to reach the leaves, but I may have to ask him for some leaves if my tree is getting bare.  We'll see how they get on.  Otherwise, the local birds will be eating a very exotic diet!

Happy Sunday everyone.


2 comments:

  1. always fancied growing silkworms - no mulberry here though - and if a ten year old tree isn't big enough. I might not be able to do it. - unless I start scouting for mulberries in other peoples gardens...... :)

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  2. I normally only raise up to 100 at a time, and the tree handles that number fine. Just don't know how it'll cope with this lot. So far, so good - fingers crossed!

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