Silkworms as FBT Staple?

[JeffreH]

Huh, thats odd about the link. You'll have to copy and paste the link into your browser through a new tab and it should work then.

Silkworms are quite a bit easier than hornworms in my opinon - the entire pupae to adult life cycle along with the actual breeding and egg collecting process is substantially easier with silkworms. Otherwise, much of it is the same = )

[Pluke]

Ah well then that's good to hear. I think I got lucky with the hornworms and I tried certain things that just worked out very well. I had about 20 casualties due to terrible information I found on the net. There was some sites that said put them in a container with balled up newspaper and empty paper towel rolls when they are in the wandering stage, so they pupate. Well, I did it and it was just awful. They all turned black and died, save a few. I got the healthy pupae from putting wanderers in a sterlite shoebox with misted spagnum moss and toilet paper rolls.

These silkworms do seem significantly easier aside from their fragility. I'm going to try them eventually, it just might be hard to keep them warm during these cold months.

[Sunshine]

Jeff, would you want to write a how-to article for culturing silkworms?

[JeffreH]

@Pluke - I ran into the same dilemma! Fortunately, I did manage to get mine to pupate using red solo cups filled with coir and sphagnun, but a storm blew away and destroyed the adult rearing enclosure right after a large portion of the colony eclosed from their pupae... project died = ( lol

@Sherry - Sure! I can write one up... can't guarantee it will be up anytime super soon though unfortunately (at least for a formal article). I have quite a bit going on right now and some other writing priorities to tend to first but I'll work on one. Thankfully Bombyx mori is a pretty frequently kept insect in a variety of hobbies so there is some good info out there on the web so in the meantime, the link I provided (the womspit.com blog) has done an excellent job outlining all of the growth steps and the process with pictures and dates. MulberryFarms.com also has a nice FAQ section in addition to some other larger suppliers.

[Sunshine]

Yay! Thank you!!!

[JeffreH]

Alrighty - So I managed to talk to one of my friend's who salvaged the old care articles we had on ReptileRooms and I now have our care and breeding articles on Silkworms...even a Chow Preparation guide. Unfortunately our site has been down and I've had some difficulty contacting my root admin to resolve the problem (hence why I coudn't link to this information before).

There is a LOT of information and it may be too obnoxious to post in this thread so I'll attempt to start a new topic and paste our articles into them. These articles were written by two good friends of mine: Rob Talkington and Cheri Smith. I'll edit in the link to the new thread in this post once I've posted it. Unfortunately, we do not have the lovely photos that were originally with the articles, but there is a plethora of written literature that should cover everything anyone would want to ever know about silkworms.

On a side note about the authors: Rob Talkington teached me a lot of what I needed to know about rearing these guys back in 2004-2005ish and Cheri Smith is a renowned bearded dragon expert who has devoted a lot of time to rescuing and understanding beardies. She has a plethora of publications in herpetoculture and we can contribute a lot of our current care information for Pogona species to her. Just wanted to give appropriate credit to the authors before I share their work.

Silkworm Care and Breeding Guide + Chow Preparation Guide can now be found at the following link:
http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...tml#post137249