Silkworm raising and Silk production

  • Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.

firecrest

Full Member
Mar 16, 2008
2,496
4
uk
Ive had a fun little project on the go, that's nearing completion, so I th
ought Id post it even though I couldnt decide which category it would go in!
Silk production (sericulture) has been around for about 3000 years, but as silkworm only eat white mulberry leaves, it was confined to those areas with enough trees to produce silk of a significant quantity. Thankfully, because white mulberry is also a health food fad, you can now buy powdered mulberry leaf and reconstitute it with water into a kind of dog food type mush, which the caterpillars will readily eat, meaning you can make your own silk at home.
silkworm6.jpg
I ordered the eggs online for about£5.00 I got 250. allegedly. clearly as the eggs are like poppy seeds, they chucked a good number in, something more like 600! This photo is a few days after hatching, they are called Keega which means `hairy baby`, they loose their hair after the first moult(instar) silkworm5.jpg
At first they hardly eat anything, a spoonful of food will keep they going and its hard to tell if they have eaten at all. They need feeding twice a day, and kept in temperatures between 72 and 82 degrees.
Within four weeks your worms will look like this, giant finger sized monsters that eat about a pound of mulberry a day, having become very demanding and now filling two 45 litre storage tubs. But don't worry, soon they'll stop eating and start making silk!
silkworm4.jpg
Ah but first you must build each of your new babies a little cradle. Cut toilet roll tubes into two or three sections and glue them together like a honeycomb. you need about 100. By now you will probably be regretting your decision to to start a worm farm as youv'e probably realized due to the work involved you wont be making your fortune in the silk trade any time soon. Not unless you can get some illegal chinese immigrants in the back bed room doing all this for you
.silkworm3.jpg
silkworm2.jpg There is the same two worms a day later with the almost complete silk cocoons. You'll know when its time for the worms to spin as they stop eating and start climbing. They also completely evacuate their bowels so it suddenly gets messy. They are already producing enough poo to fill half a tin every day. The cat does not do that much, and the worms proved difficult to clean out, having to be rolled up like a carpet to get to the layer underneath.
sadly it looks like half my worm died in these few days , some spin coccoons, others seemingly drop dead instead, presumably not being strong enough to weave silk. They use 75% of their body mass to spin the silk needed to coccoon. Each worm produces about a mile of thread in a range of colours.
silkworm1.jpg
Well this is where I'm up to. Traditionally the chinese drop them in boiling water at this stage and unwind the silk onto a little wheel, but if you dont want to kill them, you can allow them to hatch, though they will chew through the silk and damage the thread length,but its really not likely youll be doing this for profit anyway, so Ill just likely let mine hatch.
The technique of unwinding silk and weaving it into useable cloth is another story !
 

JonathanD

Ophiological Genius
Sep 3, 2004
12,809
1,479
Stourton,UK
Wow, blimey. I'm going to be watching this thread with great interest. It's a great tribute to this forum and it's members that you still get astounding threads (excuse the pun) like these. Nice one Linds.
 

firecrest

Full Member
Mar 16, 2008
2,496
4
uk
Cheers Jon :) its been a fun project, despite it being more work than I initially expected. Ive grown quite fond of my worms! When they hatch by the way, They mate and die within a day. they cannot fly either, having become so domesticated as to grow fat bodies and small wings. Once the eggs are laid they can be stored in the fridge for up to five years, so if anybody wants them Ill post eggs out
 

JonathanD

Ophiological Genius
Sep 3, 2004
12,809
1,479
Stourton,UK
Are you going to raise the young that they lay?

It's a pretty cool project. I wonder why some are not strong enough to complete that task. It's all very very interesting.

Wonder what they taste like.
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
I spin silk, but I take my hat off to you for rearing the worms :) I don't mind the worms, but the thought of the moths gives me the heebie jeebies :yikes:

The broken cocoons, the ones the moths eat their way out from, make tussah silk..... a bit slubby, usually off white rather than white, but still lovely stuff.
I didn't know about the mulberry mash stuff; very interesting :cool:
How long will they live in the cocoons before hatching ?

cheers,
M
 

TeeDee

Full Member
Nov 6, 2008
10,447
3,652
50
Exeter
A very interesting thread , marked for further reading and following.

Thank you for posting.
 

Dave Budd

Gold Trader
Staff member
Jan 8, 2006
2,894
321
44
Dartmoor (Devon)
www.davebudd.com
I was at a reenactors fair last year and the lovely Italian lady next to me had a whole sack of silk cocoons. Apparently her area of Italy was a huge producer of silk (home grown, not just woven) through the middle ages and even back into the Roman period :)

So any chance that your new silk knickers will be ready by the Moot?
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Okay this is just superb Lindsey! I love mad projects and this is pretty mad :)

I wonder if white mulberry can be grown here? We are trying black mulberry.............
 

mousey

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jun 15, 2010
2,210
254
42
NE Scotland
Wow, that is simply fascinating, I'm looking forward to seeing how much one cocoon is in thread length. Are you thinking of making anything from the silk?


I supose the must only drop a portion into boiling water to harvest unspoilt cocoons otherwise they'd kill their stock for the next generation.
 
Last edited:

Quixoticgeek

Full Member
Aug 4, 2013
2,483
23
Europe
Impressive stuff. I got a friend a white Mulberry tree as a present last year so she could raise a few silk worms. I hadn't even thought about cultivating the silk worms on this scale. I'll be following this with interest.

Julia
 

BCUK Shop

We have a a number of knives, T-Shirts and other items for sale.

SHOP HERE