Hi I just started raising silkworms and I have a few questions and concerns.
When I fed them their prepared powdered mulberry food when they were less than 2 weeks old a lot of the worms would get stuck on silk on the old pieces of food and die. I made it a habit to check the worms and transfer them off the food when I could about twice a day. I would roll up little balls of the food and squish them flat and lay them in the container with the silkworms. Is this why the instructions said to grate the food on top of them or what should I do to avoid the high die off rate of them getting stuck to silk on their food?
How many female moths do you need for each male, with breeding?
I have zebra silkworms and they are supposedly sex limited which means that the females have zebra stripes and the males are pure white, are all of my silkworms like this or just some? (I just have these zebra silkworms). I have noticed that I have about 9/10ths females and 1/10th males.
Also do zebra silkworms molt at all? I have not seen a single skin casing yet and they are 3 weeks old today. Is there any information on how long they are in each instar and how long they spend molting? Is there a growth chart with how big they get during each instar?
I started with 2000 eggs and after 3 weeks of trial and error and getting them onto mulberry leaves I have about 230 left alive. Does anyone have any tips or tricks or anything usefull for raising or breeding these zebra silkworms? All of the links I have found give general information but nothing detailed.
