"bleanne" writes:
I would be interested in any further information that you can provide me
in relation to feeding my silkworms. In particular other sources of food
apart from mulberry leaves.

Hi Leanne. I haven't seen silkworms since I was a kid, but it seems
that a lot of lizard owners do raise silkworms as fresh food for their
reptiles. Being an information junkie, I had _already_ done a web search
to satisfy my own curiosity before you posted the above, so I'm going
to just cut and paste together various snippings of information that I
kept for my own edification, but alas all reference to sources has not
been saved. This will give you an overview, anyway. But as they say,
Google is your friend. :-)

I read that mulberry leaves are higher in calcium than are most leaves,
and that's why they are the preferred food for silkworms. Also, in the
US a dried leaf product is marketed, where you just add water and pop
into the microwave to make a fresh batch of food for the silkworms, so
you can raise silkworms all year round even when the mulberry tree has
lost its leaves.

| Common Name: Silkworms
| Scientific Name: Bombyx mori
| Chinese Name chan
| Favorite Foods: Leaves from the mulberry tree (shan ja), orange trees,
| and lettuce
| Life Span: About 2 months before it is either killed to make silk, or
| becomes a moth
| Litter Size: Over 500 eggs at once
| Fun Facts: The highest-producing silkworms have single filaments of
| silk that can get over a mile long!

But perhaps not just _any_ orange tree leaf?

} Common Species and Their Uses on Encyclopedia.com
} silkworms feed on the leaves of the mulberries (genus Morus) and
} sometimes of the Osage orange ( Maclura pomifera ).
} (The Osage orange, also called bowwood because it was used by the
} Osage tribe to make bows, is a hardy tree native to the S central
} United States. Its fruit is used as a natural insect repellent.
} Cultivated widely, often as a hedge plant because of its spiny,
} impenetrable branches, it is a source of a flexible and durable wood
} and of a yellow-orange dye, from the root bark, that is similar to the
} more widely used fustic ( Maclura tinctoria ).

@ Cudrania tricuspidata Chinese Silkworm Thorn Zone 6
@ This is a large shrub to small tree, native to China and Korea, which
@ has separate male and female plants. It will grow to 20' in height and
@ width, forming a round, dense canopy. The flowers are green, clustered
@ along the branch. The ripe fruit is a showy red in the form of a hard,
@ round ball that begins to form in July and attains 1-1/2" in diameter.
@ The tree is closely related to our osage orange, with which it shares
@ thorny branches, yet little known in this country. In China its
@ leaves, like those of mulberry, are used to feed silkworms. It is
@ insect and disease resistant and prefers full sun in average soil.

} Can silkworms eat any other leaves besides mulberry?
} plants I have seen listed include lettuce, and two trees that grw wild
} in the US - Osage Orange ( Oclura pomifera) and Tree-of-Heaven
} (Ailanthus altissima).

| Other species of silk moth have silkworms that eat different plants,
| such as oaks, castor-oil plants and Polyanthus. Some silkworms are
| polyphagous, and will eat a variety of plants. A silkworm species
| native to Africa feeds on leaves of an acacia.

Perhaps you are neither raising silkworms for their silk nor as live
food for pet lizards?

$ Northern Laos: The Lap of Luxury
$ beer and lao lao. As we were leaving, he thrust a plate of silkworms
$ in our face. French fries. They taste like French fries.

But if silkworm eggs are cheap, why not try other leaves, anyway? You
might derive the satisfaction of pushing the boundary of scientific
knowledge forward by a tiny increment! For starters, how about trying
camelia, avocado, dandelion, sheep sorrel, dock, grape, nasturtium,
impatients, zucchini, hydrangia, even morning glory and buffalo grass?
Place a few eggs on each and see how they fare after hatching.

A word of caution though. If lettuce is okay, I wondered then about
cabbage. But I realized that any of the leafy greens purchased from
a store may these days have been sprayed with the BT bacteria ("Dipel")
which growers use to destroy leaf-eating grubs that turn into moths or
caterpillers. So I'd now be very wary about using ANY leaves that you
haven't grown yourself, for this reason.

Please let us know how things turn out.
--
John Savage (news address invalid; keep news replies in newsgroup)