When all was said and
done, we ended up with only ten silkworm
cocoons,
instead of the twenty recommended for breeding
your own.
One hatched out quite early, and the male moth hung around for a
while waiting for a female, then hopped the three inches out of
the box in search of a mate. I couldn’t find him, but he was
no big loss since the next few moths to hatch turned out to be
male as well.
These guys stayed
put, partly because I added a few more inches to the height of
their box, but mostly because a female finally gnawed her way out
of a cocoon. She was immediately jumped upon by one of the
male moths, and spent hours mating with him before strewing her
eggs all across the bottom of the container.
I kept waiting for
the other moths to emerge, but only one late-comer hatched
out. She was a girl, but seemed very unhealthy and died
before any of the males showed an interest in her. Our final
tally was four healthy males, one healthy female, one unhealthy
female, and four non-hatching cocoons, and we ended up with
roughly the same number of eggs we started the experiment with.
I’ve put our eggs in
the fridge for now, but will probably hatch them out in a month or
so, once the mulberry tree has had a bit more time to
recover. Hopefully we’ll learn from all of our mistakes and
will do a better job on our silkworms the second time around.
