Silkworm Eggs

paczkica

New Member
I have a few thousand eggs i got on wednesday that were suppose to have a cold pack so I could refrigerate, but there was a mix up and they didnt come with one, so I had to hatch out all of them, well, they are already starting to hatch, but only about 100 out of the 3500 have hatched how long do I wait to feed and what do I do with the hatched ones, they are too small to seperate, thanks.
 
Well they just about all hatched out now, but I have no idea how to feed this many tiny silkworms! Right now I have pieces of the chow placed about the petri dish , but there are so many that they just swarm on the food and some are left out, whats the best way to go about feeding close to 4000 silkworm babies?
 
I would get them out of the petri dish to start. That is way, way too many worms to have in a petri dish. I hatch out about a thousand at a time, but have never hatched as many as you have going. For a thousand, I use an 18" by 18" tray and feed chow in long thin strips. Personally, I would seperate them out into 4 or 5 trays with that many. For a thousand, I run thin strips of chow from one end of the tray to the other, leaving about 2 inches between the strips. When the food is eaten or dries up, I place another strip next to the one that they are on, and they generally migrate over to the new strip.

If you use a soft paintbrush, you should be able to carefully remove worms over to a new container without crushing them. It will take some careful work...

What a pain in the butt for you!

Heika
 
How do you use the paint brush to move them, I would thing it would be hard to get them off the paint brush hairs, thanks for the reply!
 
I carefully scoop them up with the paint brush. They produce that silk, which really makes things easier. Pick up one, you usually have 10 more dangling. Carefully sort of wipe them onto the new chow... lol.. sorry, hard to describe, and I think it takes a little practice. Another way to do it is to put in new chow.. wait for the migration.. and carefully move the chow strip to the new container.

Heika
 
I'm trying to decide whether or not to get silkworms again or to go with the eggs this time. It seems so much more efficient to go with the eggs...but I just want to make sure it's not going to be a ton of work and hard to do. Does anyone have an opinion on whether or not it's worth it to go with the eggs vs. the already hatched worms? Me and two other friends are going in on an order, so it would make even more sense to do the eggs so we can get the most for our money. Any opinions/stories/advice is greatly appreciated!!
 
paczkica, although paint brush is a very good method, it take too much times. I would suggest you put a tiny slice of silkworm chew next to the eggs and hatchings over night. The hatchings should be eating the chew by next morning and you should be able to move the chew and hatchings to another petri dish easily.
 
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