Interesting...mulberry leaves vs chow...

[kinyonga]

http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC5591246/
"the fructose content was significantly lower in the silkworms reared on the artificial diet, which may be related to their decreased feed intake"
"we showed that a serious shortage of some vitamins, as well as downregulations of glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and lipid metabolism occurred in the silkworms reared on artificial diets. Meanwhile, the levels of multiple amino acids and amino acid-related metabolites increased in these larvae"

 

[iPardalis]

Wow. This helps explain why silkworms are so susceptible to die offs. We planted some mulberry trees with the hope of one day being able to supply silkworms with ample amounts of fresh leaves, but it takes some serious planning to get enough trees going

I wonder if hornworms have similar issues with their artificial diets. Awesome article! Thanks for sharing.

 

[kinyonga]

Hi have 4 trees in my yard exactly for that reason!

 

[nightanole]

Silkies raised on chow will immediately switch to leaves.
Silkies raised on leaves, will not each chow till they are on deaths door.

 

[kinyonga]

That doesn't surprise me.

 

[Andee]

I raise all of my own crop of breeding and feeding silkworms on leaves, however anyone I ship off I switch over to chow or raise on chow because I know most people prefer to feed it and I have enough control here to be able to switch them if needed and if the person can offer them leaves it's not hard to switch them off the chow XD. I have noticed a drastic increase of silkworms of overall health and growth rate when supplied with leaves regularly. I use it specifically as part of the backbone to breeding my hybrid silks because I have noticed the parent moths who were raised on leaves as worms do pass on some of the health through to their babies in the beginning. It often gives the younger worms a boost compared to what I have seen on just purely raise chow ones. Add that with the wild genetics and you get some pretty amazing things that happen over different generations. They are an amazing species to work with.