The first few days.

 Little silkworms spend their days looking for fresh tender leaves and munching, munching!

 At this stage they're only about 7mm long max. These photos are taken with a macro lens.

A" traffic jam" at the end of the stalk!

The first fews days are part of the first "Instar". A change is happening in this photo as the skin is starting to shed. Their heads (I think of them as little black caps) are black.

Eggs and Baby Silkworms

When the eggs are first laid by the female silkworm moth, they are a cream color.

 As they develop the eggs turns to light brown, dark brown, then almost black.

The black color is actually the little grub inside the egg. Above the silkworm is emerging from the egg leaving the white casing behind. If you look closely, you can see some little grubs still curled up inside the egg. The clear white eggs have already hatched.

Very small, only about 3-4mm long.

The mulberry leaves were kept fresh in water in a cool-box with ice. They were rinsed and dried ( the caterpillars prefer moist not wet leaves) and cut into strips.  The baby silkworms also like the moist edges of the leaves.  These were laid over the top of  the old leaves and the silkworms would immediately crawl up onto the fresh leaves.  Then later, the old leaves were removed with tweezers, ensuring no little caterpillars were thrown out.  Often, after double-checking, a little fellow would be found on the leaves and happily rescued.

It's fun watching them stream down the stalk highways.

The young larvae have lots of little hairs.

Traffic jam!

Photographs by M. Vaughan.

The Start of My Journey With Silkworms

Couldn't believe the silkworm eggs arrived in the post!

A couple of days and they started to emerge from their little egg casing.

This is a macro photo.  In actual size the little silkworm looks like a 2-3mm pencil line, 
the eggs are the size of a pinhead.  
I initially wanted 50 eggs, ended up with 178! Almost 100% hatched.

The plastic bag was opened for air and a young mulberry leaf put inside.  The baby silkworms immediately made their way to the leaf.  Their little jaws need the young leaves as they can't manage older tougher leaves.

Photographs: M. Vaughan

Amazing Silkworms

The experience of raising Silkworms is quite a memorial one!
This is a new blog, in which I will share some of my photos and the wonder of watching the life-cycle of the Silkworm.