noob silkie questions

[zombiepixel]

Ok, so today my first batch of silkies arrived from mulberry farms.

I purchased two cups of silkworms and there are a lot of them. The instructions say to keep the cup upside down and slightly elevated so they can breath through the cloth on the lid. I've completed this step, but I want to get a lot of the frass out. How do I do that with the container tipped? Should I wait for the silkies to climb up on the provided mesh?

Also How much should I be feeding a 7mo male veiled? There are varying sizes so I gave him a couple of the mediums sized silkies I have so the other have time to get bigger and the large worms can go to my bearded dragon.

 

[warpdrive]

hi zombie,

the best way to remove all the frass is this....

place a piece of news paper on your table.
with the cup upside down (lid on the bottom), open the lid.
most of the poop will fall out with maybe a few worms too.
tap the cup so more poop falls out and then try to remove some silk so babys don't get cought in the webs.
replase any worms that fell out, and reclose the lid.

remove any mold that may be building up when you see any...otherwise you're done.

Harry

 

[zombiepixel]

Cool that's exactly what I did but with printer paper instead of newspaper. In each container there was a small mass of silk that a bunch were grouped to, I left that in there since I don't know how fragile they are and i didn't want to start ripping them away from it.

thanks warp

 

[warpdrive]

that's just it, you want to remove as much of that silk web as you can...and yes, remove the worms from it and back into the container.
otherwise small silkies will get traped in that mess and die.

Harry

 

[summoner12]

Another idea is to remove the worms from the cup and get some plastic canvas from Michaels and elevate the plastic. Place the worms on the plastic and put some food done near them. They will find the food and poop... the poop should just fall through the plastic. It also works if you find plastic like you see inside of the cup.... its called gutter guard from HD or Lowes... You can use that stuff too.

 

[zombiepixel]

Yeah I think i'm going to try and move them flipping the cup constantly is annoying and poop gets everywhere.