silkworms will only eat mulberry leaves: what a crock

ccoutts · 01-10-04, 12:19 PM

try kale. that is all.

Linds · 01-10-04, 04:09 PM

I've heard they will only eat kale is started immediately from the time they hatch?

Buster · 01-10-04, 09:34 PM

how long will they last eating that. i fed some that i had romaine and they mysteriously started dying. never had that my dieoffs before.

ccoutts · 01-10-04, 09:52 PM

i found out when trying to get my baby beardie to eat his vegetables. i had strategically placed some silks in with his kale and noticed they devoured it. these silks were only a couple weeks old, so i tried raising them on kale for a couple weeks and had no troubles with mortality whatsoever. i made sure to wash the kale with treated water before feeding.

Buster · 01-11-04, 08:53 PM

cool, i may try kale with my next ones to hatch. i'll make sure to wash it too.

Linds · 01-12-04, 05:14 PM

Well guess that myth was diminished! I'll give it a shot next time I have silkworms that run out of their food (which happens everytime...lol).

DragnDrop · 01-12-04, 06:15 PM

I fed some silk moths to the chameleons last year, and didn't realize for a while that one of the females laid eggs on the ficus tree that I use for the chams. Even with neglect, the eggs hatched (the humidity is always high for the chams, so I guess it worked). For a few days I wondered why there were chunks missing from the younger ficus leaves, until I found the silkworms had hatched and were eating the leaves. They actually grew a bit too! Seems ficus and mullberry are members of the Moracae group, also known as the Mullberry Family, so there's a chance that ficus might be a substitute if leaves or chow are gone. In my case it was Ficus benjamina that the worms ate. The one thing that makes me think it shouldn't be done for feeders is that ficus itself has a slightly toxic sap, but I don't know about how toxic the leaves are, if at all. I'd much rather just play it safe so I pitched them.

chamitch · 01-12-04, 06:23 PM

yea i noticed silkworms ate roman lettuce and ficus and hibiscus leaves.

i wonder what silkworms.ca has to say about that. haha

DragnDrop · 01-13-04, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by chamitch
yea i noticed silkworms ate roman lettuce and ficus and hibiscus leaves.

i wonder what silkworms.ca has to say about that. haha

Probably won't say much if anything, since the accepted data says that all they'll eat is mulberry leaves. That's all they're fed for silk production, and it's been like that throughout the ages.

Maybe there's more to their diet than we know. I've often thought they'd be risking extinction by not being more open minded about food, but then again a lot of species are specialized and survive. Maybe they've always only been fed mulberry leaves because they were in good supply where the silk production happens, maybe it's just easier to use mulberry,... whatever the reason, that's what has been written down and passed down through the ages. That's what we accept as fact. If some people find a new food source, that's just an added bonus, and some day it might make it into the care sheets. But are the worms really thriving on the new foods, or are they just so desperate for food that they'll try anything?

I'd still like to see the results of feeding them kale, lettuce, ficus leaves etc. Do they grow as fast, or die? Does the food alter their nutrition (probably yes here). Does it affect their reproduction, are they as irresistible to the herps since the taste might have changed?
There's alot of questions unanswered, so I'm inclined to stick to mulberry leaves and chow until I see more data.

jadegrasse · 01-20-04, 03:34 PM

I have a female vailed cham that ate all the leaves off of a ficus tree one weekend!

Edwin · 01-20-04, 05:03 PM

I read a paper on feeder insects, and how that their nutritional value is highly dependent on the type of food they are fed. Silkworms fed a diet of mulberry have more nutritional value than silkworms on other vegetables. If I remember correctly, there was a vast difference in nutritional content, depending on the type of diet.

I will try to search for the link and post it.

chamitch · 01-20-04, 05:09 PM

yea silkworm chow is a really good gut load for any insect. so u can just buy teh food and feed it to other insects liek crks or worms. without paying the high price of silkies.

Betty Miskie · 01-20-04, 05:35 PM

I bought a dozen silkworms on Saturday, brought them home and washed the kale with filtered water, placed it with the silkies and within 2 hours all the silkworms died. There went my $6.00.
I fed them kale because I wanted to try it from reading the first post. I will not try that again.