they are an incredible staple..... but they come with costs and definitly different issues.... my Beardy wouldn't take the silks b4 now he will jump in the air for them, like a dog jumping in the air for a treat!!! And wideglide I don't know if i will raise the eggs(if any come out) from my 13 cocoons now.... because i know what u mean about the health issues... i basicly see this as a science experiment im doing and with the results i willd etermine if they are able to be feeeders or just a cool project... BLinga04 I wish you would have put that msg up last week lol I ran out of food and couldn't get anymore til today so all my worms cocooned up lol but now i can go and buy some pounds of it... Wideglide is right... see if u can give it to a rescue depot or someone deserving of it...
Also I have been looking into buying worms off a guy up in alberta and his prices seem kinda high so i asked him why and if he could break down the costs of them justifiably for me(kinda nosy i know) and this is what he said.... " I hatch and raise silkworms from eggs that come in from Asia. People just don't realize what it costs to raise silkworms when the chow costs a fortune and if you get a virus or mold in your food you can lose 10,000 silkworms in a day. If your fridge temps are wrong for even a day your hatch rate drops to 50% so when you hatch silks you have to sell them for $0.30 for smalls or you lose your shirt." Does everyone agree with that? He also said that it takes 40 pounds of food to feed 20 000 worms from eggs to cocoon.... Does that seem legitimate? and if it is so if you bought the food for 25 bucks a pound its only a nickel in foor to get the hatched worm to cocoon Seems like alot of profit in it for a few hours a week of work, that is kinda fun to begin with. Some of that info just sounded kinda off to me, Whates everyone else's take on that? Wideglide I'd appreciate ur opinion the most since i think you are the silky guru Thank you
This first statement really tells it all. Why in the world would you buy eggs from Asia when you've got 20,000 worms waiting to turn into moths and mate and lay thousands and thousands of eggs? I think he's full of crap. I'm not sure about losing 10,000 silkies a day because I've never dealt with that kind of volume. I guess my fridge must be the right temp because I don't recall ever having a 50% drop in hatch rate for any eggs that went in the fridge at the correct time. Sure, I've put some eggs in way too late and early before and the hatch rate was bad but the temps didn't have anything to do with it. Maybe it's those "Asian" eggs he's using that are so sensitive to the temps in the fridge. As far as it taking 40 pounds to raise 20000 worms from eggs to cocoon that may actually be a little conservative. When the worms get big they eat a ton of food. That number also depends on if we're talking cooked chow or chow that's still in the powder form. I think there's quite a bit more time than a few hours a week into breeding 20,000 silkies but I also do think it can be very profitable. The smaller worms eat a tiny fraction of the chow the bigger worms eat so his reasoning about it taking 40 pounds to raise 20,000 eggs to cocoon shouldn't be what he bases his prices on. I mean think about it. You raise 20,000 worms to cocoon and lets say half of them emerge as moths. You've got 10,000 moths. Let's say 10% of those 10,000 moths end up as mating pairs. Now you've got 1000 mating pairs of moths. Each moth can produce from 250 to 500 eggs. You're looking at 250000 to 500000 eggs from those moths and I think I've even been a little conservative with the hatch rates, etc. In addition to the huge quantity of offspring the small worms eat so little chow it's not even funny. That's why you sell the smaller worms and not the bigger ones. How many sites do you see that sell really big silkies? I don't recall seeing any at all and it's because they eat so much that they'd be way too expensive and the profit would be much less for the seller. Of course there are other costs like equipment, cleaning supplies, electricity, etc. but I don't think the overhead would be all that much. I think if this guy is going to justify the cost to you he needs to do better than what he has. Not sure what the exchange rate is for CA money but .30 for a small silkie is ludicrous if it's anything close to a US dollar. Hope this helps! Good luck!
Give it some time and they'll drop. The worms reproduce so well eventually you'll have a lot more supply available to help make up for that demand and the prices will drop a lot.
if the prices are really that good over there you should blow a few thousand dollars on a few thousand eggs and food and get into that business of breeding the silkys urself... damn, 20 cents and egg! wow Thank you Rob, I knew he was just trying to screw me and i knew he was just a middle man but he insists one day that he has his own growing operation and then on other days he admits to orderign all his worms and eggs.... think im just gonna go with mulberry farms' supersale on eggs this week, 20 000 eggs for 40 bucks american (converts to 50 bucks canadian) , cuz if they send it with some ice packs, i should be able to refrigerate some of them right and grow the first 1-2000 hatchers? We were talking 40 pounds powdered, so a nickel per worm, you are right though large size worms eat 5 times more food in the last week of their lives than in the entire rest of their life! thats why its perfect to get the smalls cheap (since they dont suck down any food costs, just time and heating costs, which could easily be kept to a minimum if you had been in the game long enuff... What I think i don't like about this guy is his service, he keeps telling me i know nothing about the insects and just cuz im asking him why his prices are so high and if he could break down the costs for me a bit so i may understand why he wants to sell me 1000 smalls at 30 cents each, he thinks im some cheap idiot who just wants a cheap feeder for my pet, and that i shoul djust get mealworms for my beardie... this guy has a website and everything he hasn't touched up since 9 months ago, so our business is done... I will only deal with fair prices but more importantly good knowledgable ppl. Now I wonder how fast mulberry farms can get those lil bugges up to Alberta eh? lol
oh he also told me to my face that silksies never have more than 200 eggs and not all of them will ever be fertile, like half
Yeah either he's just really, really dumb or he's not being exactly truthful with you. All the eggs here were layed by the same moth and all are fertile. http://www.reptilerooms.com/albums/album68/Figure_7crp.jpg All the eggs here were also layed by the same moth and all were fertile. Wanna count them? If you do let me know what you come up with. http://www.reptilerooms.com/albums/album68/Figure_3crp.jpg Definitely use mulberryfarms as they have got outstanding customer service. I haven't dealt with them for a while but every time I have in the past I've been happy.
well thats who im going to im just worried about shipping to canada.... plus im looking at getting the food from silkwormwholesale.com but that might fall through and ill just do it all through mulberry they sounds super
FYI I just checked and mulberryfarms.com doesn't ship outside the US right now. They do have a link for a supplier in CA though. Here's the link mulberryfarms lists on their site. http://www.recorpinc.com/
ya recorp, im so not dealing with them... they are so unreasonably priced and their dealer near me is this guy from above i was talking about who's treating em like a complete idiot when we talk to im just gonna go from my other dealer in the states.... he's a great guy who charges less than half of everyone else
ya recorp, im so not dealing with them... they are so unreasonably priced and their dealer near me is this guy from above i was talking about who's treating me like a complete idiot when we talk, im just gonna go from my other dealer in canada.... he's a great guy who charges less than half of everyone else, i would definitly not go with this close dealer of recorp he's quite inconsiderate.... he also wanted 125 bucks for 5 000 eggs when im currently getting 40 000 eggs for just 50 bucks.... how justified is that when i have hearr dthey are coming from the same place overseas!
Btw Rob i counted(kinda) and there is definitly 500 eggs there.... maybe 600 how long do the worms take int he cocoons to turn into moths and hatch? im so excited yet i have no clue when to expect mothies
Well it really depends on the temps you have them at. I've had some emerge in about a weeks time and some that have taken at least 3 weeks but that's at pretty low temps. It is pretty fun to do this especially when you're first starting. Good luck!!!
right on well im going to be away at day 10,11 and 12, so whould i just keep the temps at 75 and hopefully they'll emerge when im back
If they emerge while you're away they should live for a good 5 days so you'll still be able to check them out alive.
If your lucky enough to get both genders and they get to work on marking their scents right then yea you could have some getting it on when you get home buddy hehehe
I just got my first-ever silkies this afternoon. How do I get them out of the shipping box and into their new container? The egg crates are glued into the packing box and I don't want to just dump it as all the poo will come out. Do I have to pick each one out individually?
