coastal silkworm

[Will Hayward]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, but not to chams. Silkworms raised on fresh Mulberry leaves have been shown to be higher in calcium than chow fed worms.

Please share sources for this info.

 

[flpanther]

Here is a quote from the article on calcium I read in the chameleon online e-zine. It was written by Sue Donoghue VMD, DACVN. I'm not sure where she got that info, but it makes sense to me(fresh is better).

Inside vertebrates, about 99% of the body's calcium is in bone. Invertebrates, in contrast, contain no bone and total body calcium is low. So low that most fail to provide enough calcium to chameleons. Crickets, mealworms, super worms, and fruit flies contain approximately 0.1% calcium on a dry matter basis. Wax worms contain less; silkworms contain about 0.2% when fed fresh mulberry leaves (less if fed commercial foods).

This is the address of the article:

http://www.chameleonnews.com/year2003/jan2003/nutrition/nutrition_jan_03.html

I also found some interesting info. showing development of silkworms to be different depending on whether they ate female leaves or male leaves:

http://abstracts.aspb.org/pb2004/public/P54/7778.html

 

[Will Hayward]

thank you. I have been looking for this article for some time now, but the resources on the ezine site are so vaste that its hard to remember which link gave me which tidbit of info.

The second article is fascinating aswell though. Had no idea.