My Silkworm babies!

At the end of last year I had some silkworms pupate, emerge as moths , mate and lay eggs. I then put the eggs into the fridge for a few months of diapause. About 10 days ago I took them out of the fridge and put them into a converted humid tub on top of Amy's vivarium where it was nice and warm, and yesterday the tiny silkies started to hatch! I had 14 yesterday and that was followed by another 70 or so today! I am so excited as I have never tried to breed these before and if I can the free food will be a total win!

Here's a few pics - in the first one you can see the holes in the eggs where the babies emerged!


The eggs - the grey/purple ones are yet to hatch and the white ones are empty cases.

Wow that's spectacular, they're so small!

They really are very tiny! I had to move them using a cocktail stick!

a big congrats.
for some this may be quite hard, but you seemed to take on the chalange and so far win. now the hard part is keeping them alive as such a small size.

Harry

The pictures are really great. I hope you can write a more detailed account on your success that others can copy and have a go at raising them.

I am worried Tiff. You know how you get attached, are you actually going to be able to feed off something you raised? I hope Tommy & Amy know how to beg.

Well I may not be around so much for a while - these things are gonna need mroe care than the chameleons do! I had another 65 hatch yesterday and there are more that hatched this morning that I need to transfer. The hard part is finding them on the food when I need to move them to a new blob of food as they are very dark rather than the normal white colouring.

You can't toss us overboard for your silkies!! You at least need drop by and tell us how your worms are doing. How about at least once every other day? Are you willing to make that kind of commitment?

I'll still be around, don't worry! You can't get rid of me that easily!

miss lily said:

i'll still be around, don't worry! :d you can't get rid of me that easily!

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good!!!!!!!!!!!

See! I'm still here! Have now got 9 tubs conatining a grand total of 171 baby silkworms. There are still a few more left to hatch though - only had 11 new ones today. It takes ages to transfer them all to new food, not to mention the eye strain whilst looking for the smaller ones on the food, lol!! Haven't had any casualties yet though! The oldest worms are 4 days old now and actually look like silkworms rather than tiny black caterpillars!

See! I'm still here! Have now got 9 tubs containing a grand total of 171 baby silkworms. There are still a few more left to hatch though - only had 11 new ones today. It takes ages to transfer them all to new food, not to mention the eye strain whilst looking for the smaller ones on the food, lol!! Haven't had any casualties yet though! The oldest worms are 4 days old now and actually look like silkworms rather than tiny black caterpillars!

You are doing a great job with them! Have any turned white yet?

Thanks Jann! The first lot that hatched are looking more grey/white than the others - they are now 4 days old.

Are you painting by numbers on your paper towel tubes?

Wow, those are amazing pictures! I am really tempted to eventually try this myself, but I suppose I should first test if my chameleon even likes silk worms, haha. Brilliant to see some close-up pics though, makes everything a bit clearer.

Syn said:

Are you painting by numbers on your paper towel tubes?

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Lol! I've been rumbled! Seriously though - I had to section off the clusters so I could count the eggs! I just wanted to know how many there were cos it didn't look like that many... until I counted them, lol!

Snowberry said:

Wow, those are amazing pictures! I am really tempted to eventually try this myself, but I suppose I should first test if my chameleon even likes silk worms, haha. Brilliant to see some close-up pics though, makes everything a bit clearer.

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Thanks! They are so tiny it's hard to get good in focus pics of them.

Hey so I was just curious how they are still doing?

WOW I commend you! We lost power for almost 4hrs during the severe thunder storms and It is 100 degrees outside! I had a tub of silkworms on the kitchen table and they stunk so bad. Hope you don't loose power anytime soon.