Silkworm help please!

[Miss Lily]

Does anyone have any tips for moving silks of a few days old onto some new food? They hatched a few days ago and I just brushed everything onto a couple of piles of chow. Now I need to get them onto some new food and need to know the easiest way other than transferring them one by one!

 

[Branman]

I've heard people say use a new paint brush. The tip makes it easy to transfer them to the new food.

 

[Miss Lily]

I do use a paintbrush, but it is still so time consuming!

 

[Branman]

Yeah there really isn't a way of moving a lot of them at one time. I haven't found a way to do it that isn't time consuming

 

[Whatcamo]

What I do is I make a thin trail of food with a larger blob of food at the end they end up all over the blob then you can gently move the blob with them all on it

 

[d3s5]

I keep my silks and chow in a straight, narrow line. When more chow is needed, I put another thin line of chow right next to, but not quite touching the old chow - along the same straight line. The silks just crawl onto the new chow by themselves. I may have to move a straggler or two with a paintbrush the next time I check on them, but it makes life a lot easier!!

 

[Miss Lily]

Thanks everyone, some good ideas there! I shall have to move them into wider containers so I can put a new line of food next to them. That makes so much sense and will require less handling of them too.

 

[pssh]

It makes it much easier if you use an icing piping bag when you make the chow. When the chow is still liquidy scoop some into the bag and tie it off with something. When the chow becomes firm, you cut off a tiny bit of the tip of the bag and squeeze it out near the worms. Even if you squeeze it out on the worms, the majority of them wiggle their way out from under it and onto the new chow since the old chow is hard. It makes a little nest of dried chow under it for them to climb around on. The little nest works as a lame mesh to allow the poop to fall down to as well.

It also keeps the chow sterile because you can just squeeze out the little bit of chow that was exposed to air (from the tip) when you need to use it again. When I do it I only replace the chow when it gets dry so that mold doesn't become an issue. I don't even have to move the worms until they are big enough to move with tweezers or by hand usually. My die off rate has dropped dramatically since I started using the piping bags.