June 2010 Archives

Cocooning

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A couple days ago I stopped feeding the silkworms to force them to cocoon. I had been basically denuding the mulberry tree a neighbor had generously allowed me to prune from, and was ready for the silkworms to be DONE. (And, to be clear, they were ready; they would happily have eaten more but did not need to. They had been in the fifth instar for 8-9 days.)

The process from there is simple: after food is withdrawn, the caterpillars will move off the leaves (or what used to be the leaves) and start climbing up. I made them a pile of toilet paper tubes to cocoon in, because they are cheap and plentiful (we collected them for a few months). They climb up and look around for a good spot, trying out a few tubes and spots until they find one that feels just right.

Househunters

The little guys find a tube they like and make a silk mesh to hang themselves in before they start the cocoon in earnest. Also, one last poop, for posterity:

Caterpillar starting to cocoon

And another one, this one in the process of expelling the contents of its gut.

One last poop for posterity

There are a hundred different ways of making places for silkworms to cocoon. Professionals and more serious growers put them in a folded chickenwire mesh structure. Lots of people use egg cartons (we have another use for those). Plenty of people use toilet paper tubes, mostly set vertically in a box. I put mine horizontally and made a stack. They don't seem to mind too much.

A few of the caterpillars started climbing up on the toilet paper tubes I gave them right away. But nobody chose a spot until Sunday morning. This is one of the first cocoons, a day later:

Newly formed cocoon

This is one of the Ken's Yellow cocoons. The colour is just in the gum on the outside of the silk: if you process it normally, you will end up with white silk. Or you can leave the gum on and have a stiff, yellow silk.

A yellow cocoon

It takes a silkworm about 2 days to spin a complete cocoon, and they stay in the cocoon for about a week before emerging. I don't want these guys to emerge as moths, but I do want them to spin as much silk as possible, so on Friday I will be baking them in the oven to kill them in place. Then I can reel the silk off the cocoons.

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