will silk worms eat anything other than mulberry?

i went to a book store with the picture of the tree in my back yard, in my head. and the pics in the book matched the pics in my head, for mallberry. so i went back home, and looked at the leafs, and there diff looking from what i remember. so i thru them in any way, and the silkies are just scarfing them down like crazy. so does that mean the leafs are mulberry, or will the silkies eat anything, and just die, from from not eating the right kind of food?
thanx
nevin

ps. should i give them any kind of water, or do they get it from the leafs?
thanx again
nevin

Interesting question, my guess is you can get a definitive answer from one of the many online sellers of feeder insects. Some have caresheets for what they sell.

Good luck
GB

good idia, thank you

We have been raising silkworms for about 5 years and we have found that they will eat only a few other things, besides the mulberry trees which they prefer.

It seems there is a relationship between the tree and the worm - for optimum growth and to be able to reproduce, the worms need that tree and it's nutrients.

One should only offer fresh (not wet) leaves to silkworms - and never water. While a silkworm can survive rain in nature - the worm always has a chance to dry out. Damp leaves afford the chance for mildew - so best to wash and let dry if feeding leaves removed from trees. We have been told that you can store the leaves in the produce section of your refrigerator - if dried and packed in bags. We have not tried this.

Some of the few other things they will eat are: fruit tree leaves (peach especially); rowan tree leaves (mountain ash); and grated carrots. We discovered this by experimentation - just to see if they would eat them.

Your local nursery can identify the mulberry for you - take a sample twig with a leaf or two to them. Most mulberry trees produce berries, but there is a fruitless variety.

Hope this helps,
~Morgana
Reptayls, Ltd.

Wormman.com offers Russian Mulberry Tree seeds in the event you want to grow your own. Click on their link for silkworms for more info.

I fed some silkmoths to my chams, and didn't realize that one of the moths laid eggs on the Ficus benjamina in the cage. It took me a while to realize the leaves (especially young leaves) weren't suffering from some strange blight - it was silkworms munching on them. The worms were a good size too, about 1/4" by the time I saw them and moved them over to chow. Another batch of silkworms I raised for a while on benjamina leaves grew, but way slower than chow or mulberry raised worms.
Ficus is in the same family as mulberry (Moraceae) so maybe the relationship is close enough?

thank you to all of you, the tree i have out back, is producing fruit and always has. i was never sure if it is a mulberry, or a rasbery tree.
nevin