Silk worm only feed on leaves from one particular plant called the mulberry. In order to do silk worm farming on a large scale, you need to plant mulberry trees of different varieties on large scale.
Popular mulberry varieties
The popular varieties of mulberry include Pakistan mulberry from Islamabad Pakistan which has very large fruits of up to 2.5 inches in length with sweet fruit and firm flesh.
Collier which is a hybrid cross of the white and red mulberry. This has purple fruits with sweet flavor.
Russian from china which has a reddish – black fruit on a tall and drought resistant tree often grown for wildlife or windbreaks.
Illinois everbearing variety which is a hybrid cross of the white and red mulberry. Black, ever sweet and large fruit from a vigorous productive tree.
Rivera which is purple-black, very sweet and long ripening.
Agronomy of mulberry
Obtain good mulberry cuttings and plant them at a spacing of 3ft by 3ft.
Fertilize the soils with compost and mulch to keep the soils evenly moist.
Prune young trees to enable the plant produce strong structural branches.
After establishment of the mulberry, do the weeding to keep the garden free from weeds and after 6 months, the farmer is free to harvest. At this time, the yield is not good enough and goes on increasing up to 2 to 3 years.
Silkworm rearing
To start silk worm farming, you need to first plant mulberry for feeding the silk worms, construct a standard rearing house which is 30 ft by 20 ft and this can accommodate 40,000 silk worms.
After, get training to equip your self with skills of rearing the silkworms.
Start rearing the silk worms from either eggs or silk larvae.
Silk worms under go complete metamorphosis though the larvae undergoes 5 different instars.
Adult male and female moth are put in a demarcated place to have them mate for 10 hours. After they are separated. The female lays eggs while the male one dies.
After laying eggs, the eggs are treated with acid and formalin to soften the egg to enable the egg hatch.
Processing the silk
After harvesting the cocoons, the cocoons are boiled to dissolve the gum.
After the cocoons are riled into threads but this depends on the type of fabric you need to make.
