Silkworms as FBT Staple?

[Pucki513]

I've been researching silkworms as a staple for my FBTs, but can't find too much info. Has anybody done this for their FBT? Don't like crickets and the roaches...ick Don't mind the silk worms however Any tips/personal experiences would be helpful

[JeffreH]

Silkworms are possibly one of the best feeder items you can offer your herp. Variety is always best, so be sure to supplement the diet occasionally with other food items, but silkworms are hands-down the most nutritious option as a staple.

In addition to being soft-bodied, silkworms are very high in calcium. They also have a very low overall fat composition and a very high percentage of protein compared to other feeders. They have some of the highest calorie from protein and lowest calorie from fat contents around (something often neglected by most nutritional analysis charts).

Furthermore, they contain an enzyme called serrapeptase that aids calcium absorption and has been known to reduce pain and inflammation, and breaks down arterial plaque. These properties have been documented and tested on rescued bearded dragons by Cheri Smith where she found that silkworms were one of the best feeders to provide to recovering animals and those that were immunosuppressed.

Silkworms are a lot of work to breed, however. They are also quite expensive to rear compared to other feeders, particularly if you do not have any fresh mulberry around to use as a food source. They are one of the only species of insect in the wolrd that has completely adapted to being reared by humans and require us to survive (they literally just sit there staring up at the sky waiting for food)... but because of this they are incredibly fragile and susceptible to disease. Food must be sterile and you'll preferably wear gloves treated with 70% alcohol before handling the food or worms to ensure that there is no bacterial pathogen transfer.

If you want some tips on breeding and keeping them let me know... I could write a mini novel but am short on time tis morning = )

[Pucki513]

Thanks for your response. I would definitely appreciate more information. I can grow Mulberry trees, so the food source would be ok. I'm trying to decide between the silkworms and red wigglers, so any help is welcome

[JeffreH]

I haven't actually raised red wigglers; but as a rule most species of earthworm aren't overly difficult to culture and will be far less time consuming and costly than raising silkworms. Not sure if expenses and time are as big of a factor to you, but they are definitely something to consider with silkworms.

Firstly, read this. A very nice informational guide with pictures that was useful to me when I started breeding the chinese silkworm... this in additional to literature from online suppliers will provide you with more than enough info on rearing these guys: http://www.wormspit.com/bombyxsilkworms.htm

Economically, the best way to go about rearing silkworms is to either A) Breed them, or B) Purchase bulk quantites of eggs from a supplier in addition to bulk quantities of dry chow. While it is convenient to buy the larvae or pods that they are frequently sold in, it can be expensive and unreliable... I've found consistently that many silkworm suppliers don't always have certain sizes available at all times. If you can get eggs shipped to you, it is possible to refrigerate them and hatch them out as you need them (but you'll need to talk to the supplier about this).

When breeding, you can also run into inconsistency by demographic stochastistity... perhaps a moth will not eclose from its pupae or perhaps the eggs will be infertile. Or perhaps you end up with a greater quantity of males than females. I've also run into dilemma's with female's laying lower quantities of eggs than anticipated which can throw a curveball in your feeding plans if you have a lot of mouths to feed.

You'll want to have lots of dry chow on hand as larvae or any variety or moth or butterfly consume INSANE quantites of food. I forget the exact statistic, but I believe from the time of hatching to reaching their 5th instar at about 4wks of age, a silkworm larvae will grow 5000x its size (Imagine an 8lb infant growing to 40,000lbs in a month). They need fed frequently if not at all times - I would say 2-3x daily for younger instars and as little as 1x daily for older larvae if you want them to last. If you are going for optimal breeding production, have food available at all times and keep them nice and warm and clean.

Newborns do not have the mandible strength to eat mature mulberry leaves so they must be fed chow or fresh leaves from the Spring... never feed mulberry leaves and then chow because they will ignore the chow after getting a taste a real mulberry (you can go from chow -> mulberry though). If http://mulberryfarms.com still has their tutorial, I would highly recommend reading it and going through their FAQ section. If I recall correctly they cover a lot of the basics in care and how to feed.

If you have mulberry trees available that are untouched by any kind of chemical, you will save quite a bit of time and money... not only will you not be paying for the chow for later instars but you will also have less to cleanup and will not need to be regularly cooking and preparing chow (a process that can be smelly and a bit annoying at times).

One suggestion I have is to purchase some plastic canvas grid/mesh (#7 mesh) for mid-late instars. You can place in in the bottom of the container they are in raised up in some way and their frass will fall through the grating holes... this helps to keep things clean and sanitary as these guys poo nearly as much as they eat. While it is possible to rear them on a flat empty bottom, I found it tedious to collect individuals and noticed more die-offs and potential for mold/bacterial growth as they developed a silky mess of food and frass. Here is a picture of a culture reared on flat bottom, imagine all of that brown and nasty stuff being gone if you use canvas grating:


In all honestly, the link I first provided will be a great resource for photos and a walkthrough tutorial to the breeding and rearing process. I have a few photos in my photobucket account that I'll go ahead and post an additional resource, but honestly between the wormspit site and any info you can gather from suppliers (i.e. mulberry farms, silkwormshop, coastal silkworms, etc) you'll be golden.

Here is a photo of how to handle the larvae... please do not use your bare hands as it can cause pathogen transfer. I've had entire cultures die to bacterial infections very readily...gloves sterilzed in alcohol (especially when preparing wet chow food):


Preparation for Pupation when mature larvae begin to wander:


I lost a lot of my silkworm photos when my computer crashed but I'll see what I can do about getting more up... Pictures are always a useful tool to understanding how things work. I can't think of anything else to really add right now but would be happy to aid you in any additional specific questions you might have. Sorry if this post is sporatic and unorganized, I was just going off of thought = )

I really enjoyed rearing these guys; but roaches definitely trumped them in convenience and cost effeciency and now I only buy silks to supplement the diet of my herps. If you enjoy culturing insects, silkworms are pretty fun... its honestly like rearing an additional pet for the amount of effort you put in. They are significantly more demanding than other common feeders due to their temperature and feeding needs, but an excellent staple feeder for your herps.

[Pluke]

Jeff, that link doesn't work. It takes you to frogforums, heh. I'm interested to see how these are raised too.. I just got done raising hornworms, these were next on my list to try.

Edit: I actually have a mulberry tree growing in my yard too, haha. I went and looked for some of these worms on it before I knew that they were completely dependent on humans. I just typed in that address at google and found the site. Tons of information on them, thanks Jeff. Hopefully I see some at the next reptile show. My Green pacman is pretty picky about his food.. he rarely takes anything other than nightcrawlers anymore. I offer him dubia's and hornworms all the time he just refuses and then he'll almost instantly take a nightcrawler, lol. Hopefully he'll like these.

[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