silkie moths doing the mating dance.

Yeah it looks like they're on their way to becoming dark. My experience with regards to cooling and not cooling is that I've had some eggs hatch that have never been cooled but most of those batches skipped the dark purple/black color stage and went right into gray. Every batch that has been cooled so far has hatched no problem so that tells me the best chance you'll have to get these developed and hatched is to stick them in the fridge for a couple of weeks after they get to that dark color. Unfortunately I'm not sure exactly how long you need to cool them.

 

on average how many days does it take to get to the dark color? its been three days and they are a few shades darker than they were int hose pics and they dont seem to be changing much more...

 

I've seen it take about 5 days or so to get them all dark. A lot of this I believe is dependent on your temps. What have you got the temps at and what are you using to measuer those tenps.

 

um just a digital probe thermometer and iits usually about 68 - 72 in my house...

 

Yeah that's pretty cold and it's definitely going to make everything take longer. Personally if you want to have a chance of hatching those eggs I'd put a low wattage light on them during the daytime to get those temps up a little. 74 consistently would be better than 68.

 

ya i leave my house set to sauna mode when i go for work but when im at home its just so brutaly hot... im a polar bear at heart i think.... ill work on setting up my spare ten gallon tank into a lil incubator for em in the future... if these ones went down to like 63 today while my house was on ac mode for a few hours... do you think they are all dead or would it have had any effect on em... since i believe they are fully color changed now...

 

I think they're probably just fine.

 

k well how long should i leave em in the fridge before tryign to hatch em?

 

I'd put them in there for a month but as far as what the best timeframe for that is I do not know and haven't seen any opinions on it either.

 

Hey Randy I think we are on to something here.....I was thinking I may just have to get to work on that room for raising a few more worms.
You might want to phone me later and swap a few ideas eh.

 

ya i definitly have a growing customer base...

 

Yeah I think there is definitely a high demand for silkies up there. Good luck!!

 

thanks...