Hornworm eggs galore..

[Pluke]

Alright.. so I orignally had about 33 worms. About 20 of them were ready to turn into Cacoons. I tried two methods of getting them to pupate. The first I read about on a manduca sexta hornworm raising information page. It said to put the worms in a container with balled up newspaper and toilet paper rolls. HUGE MISTAKE! DO NOT do this. All of the worms dried up and died even with regular misting and keeping it moist. Terrible. I was pretty upset with this.

The method that worked. I took a sterlite tube, shoebox sized, and drilled a bunch of little holes in the top for ventilation. I filled it with a bunch of spagnum moss and a couple toilet paper rolls. This worked great, within a week of wandering, they all pupated. I also had some in a folgers coffee can with spagnum moss and some toilet paper/cardboard and this worked just as good, keep in mind that I misted both of these enclosures pretty decently every day or every other day, depending on how warm it was. If they needed moisture, I sprayed. You just don't want it to be too dry. With this method, none of my pupa died. Which I hear is pretty common, so this method works great. All 12 of the pupa I had have all hatched so far, I have one left and I'm willing to guess it'll hatch tonight.

After they were done pupating I had about 12 pupa. I took the 12 of them in buried them in about an inch of eco earth in a sterlite container, I left the heads sticking out but I don't think it matter. As you'll be removing them from the dirt before they pop. They sat in the dirt for about a month, maybe less, and they start turning a dark brown. When this happened, I put them on the surface of the dirt and opened the sterlite container and put it in the cage I had them in. The cage I used is just a animal cage like a rabbit cage or something I had in my barn, I took that and bought some screen stuff at Lowes and just coated the cage with that. The cage is probably 30"18"30. I had a humming bird feeder with Lemon-Lime Gatorade in it with a little sugar added. I don't even know if that was necessary, they drink it and they are all still alive. When you place the container with the pupa in the cage make sure they have a way to climb out of it. I made the mistake of having one hatch with the lid still on the container and it ruined it's wings, I felt terrible as it couldn't fly. When they climb out of the box they'll climb up the screen and hang upside down, after of course crapping all over the place. Make sure you have a few layers of newspaper on the bottom of your cage. These moths need "moonlight" in order for them to breed I guess, so I placed them next to the window in my room where you can see the moon every night. I had a full moon these last couple of days so they were going crazy, that probably helped a lot. I hear you can just paint a nightlight bulb with black enamel paint and that works.. I'd be willing to bet a night heat light would work, too.

After about 3 days of having the moths I had a problem.. I COULDN'T FIND ANY TOMATO PLANTS!! I did some research and heard they liked grapevine leafs, which I have a ton of in my yard.. and alas, it worked great. They started laying the night I placed the vine into the cage. They laid eggs all over the place, on the humming bird feeder, the leaves, and the screen.. even in the eco earth I had in there, which is pretty annoying. They literally lay them in the most annoying places they can. Make it fun for you to collect. -_-

Anyways.. yah, that's about it. If I missed something I'll fix it, but you can get the gist of it from what I have hear. I'm sure in winter or cold conditions it would be harder, but I had summer on my side. I didn't have to use heat lamps or anything, I just kept the pupas on my indoor porch so they get plenty of daylight and outside temperatures. Enjoy, any questions, as I said before, feel free to ask.