Are silkworms able to be gutloaded?

bucky

New Member
I ordered 100 silkworms a couple days ago and they should be coming soon. I was wondering if you should gutload them with like veggies,or is the food that comes with them nutritious? And what temperatures should they be kept in?
 
I ordered 100 silkworms a couple days ago and they should be coming soon. I was wondering if you should gutload them with like veggies,or is the food that comes with them nutritious? And what temperatures should they be kept in?

They have food for the Silkworms.
 
silkworm will not eat anything other than mulberry leaves or the silkworm chow.
They are already nutritious as they are. (even much better than crickets)
as far as temp and care, I cover a great length in this thread:
https://www.chameleonforums.com/silkworms-101-a-7906/

and you can PM me if you have any specific Q, i'll answer to the best of my knowledge.
 
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Not only will they only eat the silkworm chow or mulberry leaves, if you feed them anything else they won't be able to complete their life cycle properly and might not live as long...
 
The above posts are all correct ... however .... there is a way to gut load a silkworm.
Heika is the one who initially experimented with this and I have experimented with it since hearing about it from her.
You can mix dry gut load, chopped or processed vegetables, etc. into cooked chow before it sets and the silkworms will eat this.
You cannot maintain silkworms on this diet. It should be fed to worms that are going to be fed off the night before feeding.
I repeat:
The worms that eat this will not survive longer than a couple of days so only offer it to ones that will be eaten soon.
Keep this mix separate and label it as gut load so you don't accidentally feed it to your silkworm colony.

-Brad
 
Ive also fed them raw fruit/vegetables without mixing the chow. They ate it all up. But as said, they wont survive very log so they'll need fed off.

Speaking of which, anyone have any idea what the nutritional value of the silkworm chow is? Just curious how it compares to gut loading with something else.
 
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