Due to some dieoff during our final silkworm week, we ended up with only ten silkworm cocoons, but that should be enough to carry our livestock on to the next generation.  I was amazed by the colors of the cocoons, especially the brilliant orange one that almost looks fake.  My understanding is that commercial silkworm producers select for white cocoons so that they don't have to bleach the silk before dying it.

One of our chicken blog readers wrote in to ask if she could have our cocoons after we're done with them, which made me realize it's far from common knowledge how silk is produced.  Unfortunately, you have to decide whether to use your cocoons to make silk or whether to let the moths escape and breed, so our cocoons will end up being useless from a fiber perspective.

If you're not trying to breed the moths, though, it is quite feasible to make silk on the backyard scale if you're up for some tedious labor.  Just boil the cocoons once they're fully formed, which kills the pupae inside and dissolves the glues binding the silk together.  Each cocoon is made up of one extremely long strand, which you can tease apart and wind up, then weave like any other thread.  The reason you can't raise the moths and still use the thread is that the mature insect gnaws its way to freedom, breaking that long thread into many smaller pieces that are much less useful.

Mark and I are still on the fence about whether silkworm culture is an efficient use of time, but we're definitely going to breed our moths and start tweaking the procedure so it works better.  Stay tuned for round two, coming up next month.