homemade silkworm chow?

[Whammo72]

So the city cut off a huge branch from a mulberry tree at the end of my street and left it sitting there for a few day. I was able to strip it of leaves and got a couple of garbage bags full.

It will go bad before I will be able to use it as i have not as of yet been able to find a way to preserve them for future use.

I dried a bunch in the oven and was thinking of powdering them up and then mixing the powder with water and agar agar similar to homemade chow when needed.

I do not see a reason that this would not work. Anyone else had similar success with this?

Thanks for the input, as always, its appreciated!

 

[pssh]

unless you know the ingredients and amounts to a working chow, it will probably not work. Plus the leaves are not the new growth like the commercial mulberry chow. The babies probably wont be able to eat it.

 

[ladysilkworm]

So the city cut off a huge branch from a mulberry tree at the end of my street and left it sitting there for a few day. I was able to strip it of leaves and got a couple of garbage bags full.

It will go bad before I will be able to use it as i have not as of yet been able to find a way to preserve them for future use.

I dried a bunch in the oven and was thinking of powdering them up and then mixing the powder with water and agar agar similar to homemade chow when needed.

I do not see a reason that this would not work. Anyone else had similar success with this?

Thanks for the input, as always, its appreciated!

I read somewhere but could not find the link about the ingredients of the chow. I source my chow from two different places.. and they smell different after a few days.. Can't say which is better. The silks eat it just fine. The color chow doesn't smell like your typical chow at all. It's hard to describe. Some customers say the silks didn't take to color chow immediately, but after mixing it with regular chow they eventually ate it all up and colored up real nicely.. even created their own colors.

As far as I remember, there is agar in it (expensive stuff though), and some corn meal stuff?? some vitamins, etc.

i have a friend who sent me some homemade chow too. It's nothing like the purchased ones... he says it works but I have not tried it. It smelled like vitamins.

Definitely go on and experiment and let us know!

mulberry powder is actually made from stems, veins, and some of the more tender barks.. they get refined as they go..

you can buy pure mulberry powder and they range drastically in price. They refine and extract a particular ingredients in it to make tea, vitamins, food additives etc.

I have a pack of pure mulberry powder, (unrefined and unextracted) sent to me from manufacturer as sample.. it will be interesting to try it out with my bags of agar too! It isnt chow but much much expensive.

If you are successful, you can literally buy tons of mulberry powder on the cheap and manufacture your own chow! Take them to a mixing plant, repackage and sell!! Then we won't be at the mercy of MF and CS.. they have an entire US monopoly as exclusive agents for eggs and chow.. the source company wont sell them to you.

A few places do manufacture chow in Asia. and MF is now sourcing their chow from Europe because their shipment go stalled due to the scare last year from milk powder with additives in it.. .. I think this is why they don't sell chinese chow anymore..and they jacked up the price because it is 'european'..

oh one thing about drying the leaves.. you can cut the branches off.. they don't have to ability to self seal like picked leaves do.. they will dry up in a few days and you wouldn't have to bake them in the oven. Picked leaves can store unfrigerated for quite some time too.

 

[BillandKaren]

The key is the preservatives how much to add and which ones to add to stop the mold from growing so fast and not kill your worms.

 

[Dave Weldon]

Howdy,

Here's the article that Reptoman found and posted back in 2009 about blanching mulberry leaves and then freezing them. I've done it a few times over that last couple of years. I've even used some of the leaves after a year in the freezer and they were still eaten and produced healthy silkies. The leaves won't come out from being frozen looking very good. They remind me of cooked (blanched) spinach . I usually tear away 4-5 leaves from a Zip-loc'd, frozen stack of 15-20 and then run them under the tap for a few seconds. I leave them pretty damp when placed with the silkes. I've had good luck keeping them from quickly turning crispy like japanese nori by leaving a very wet paper towel at one end of the silkie tank and covering the whole tank with a towel. This helps to keep the humidity high enough to keep the leaves moist while being consumed by the silkies over the next 8 hours or so .

https://www.chameleonforums.com/those-who-have-silkworkms-their-own-mulberry-tree-31456/

 

[ladysilkworm]

The key is the preservatives how much to add and which ones to add to stop the mold from growing so fast and not kill your worms.

yes, do you know what is added??
I suspect preservatives but i didn't want to say anything.. I think this is why some sellers say their chow is better.. it lasts longer thanks to these stuff.. but of all the insect feeders out there.. pretty much everything they eat is organic or fortified but not with chemical additives.. it's a shame, coz that kind of contradicts the benefits of the silkworms. Doesn't it??

 

[Texas Ranger]

Yes I did that and it works.

Howdy,

Here's the article that Reptoman found and posted back in 2009 about blanching mulberry leaves and then freezing them. I've done it a few times over that last couple of years. I've even used some of the leaves after a year in the freezer and they were still eaten and produced healthy silkies. The leaves won't come out from being frozen looking very good. They remind me of cooked (blanched) spinach . I usually tear away 4-5 leaves from a Zip-loc'd, frozen stack of 15-20 and then run them under the tap for a few seconds. I leave them pretty damp when placed with the silkes. I've had good luck keeping them from quickly turning crispy like japanese nori by leaving a very wet paper towel at one end of the silkie tank and covering the whole tank with a towel. This helps to keep the humidity high enough to keep the leaves moist while being consumed by the silkies over the next 8 hours or so .

https://www.chameleonforums.com/those-who-have-silkworkms-their-own-mulberry-tree-31456/

 

[BillandKaren]

yes, do you know what is added??
I suspect preservatives but i didn't want to say anything.. I think this is why some sellers say their chow is better.. it lasts longer thanks to these stuff.. but of all the insect feeders out there.. pretty much everything they eat is organic or fortified but not with chemical additives.. it's a shame, coz that kind of contradicts the benefits of the silkworms. Doesn't it??

yes I do but dont know the amounts we are testing it with our hornworms

 

[pssh]

There are naturally derived preservatives. They just dont always work as well as the synthetic ones. Preservatives in most insect medias are equal to or less than 1% of the whole thing after water is added. I have a recipe laying around somewhere. BTW, this is the Kara from the butterworm trade

 

[ladysilkworm]

There are naturally derived preservatives. They just dont always work as well as the synthetic ones. Preservatives in most insect medias are equal to or less than 1% of the whole thing after water is added. I have a recipe laying around somewhere. BTW, this is the Kara from the butterworm trade

yes I know it is you Kara


I know ascorbic acid, benzoic acid and critic acid are some..they can be produced in labs.

ascorbic acid is very expensive.. not sure about the rest.
however, silkworm GI tracts are alkalinic.. so, too much preservatives won't do them good either...my expert tells me the bacteria on the chow is mostly the probiotics ones that are good for us.. but they are not good for silkworms because of the acidity issue. But I guess it beats having the silkworms dead from eating bad chow..