It is above all the women of the peasant family who take care of the silkworms and supervise the various stages of the farming: the moults, the construction of the “wood”, the elimination of the putrid cocoons, and the coiling onto small reels of the filament, freed from the sericin manually in boiling water.

The farming begins by placing the eggs on straw mattresses.
When they have hatched the caterpillars are then put on wicker trellises, frames made of wood with a number of shelves made of cane mats.

At this point, the caterpillars are covered, and fed with fresh, dry mulberry leaves, which are cleaned and broken into small pieces.

As they grow, the appetite of the caterpillars increases, and they expand rapidly in size eating only mulberry leaves, first broken up and later whole.

When the caterpillars are eating all the time, then the work of the peasant family becomes very demanding. To feed 6,000 caterpillars you need 100 kilos of mulberry leaves. This is why the silkworm farms have to be located close to mulberry tree plantations, so that the voracious appetite of the caterpillars can be satisfied continually with fresh leaves.

The bombyx mori is thus named because mori, the species name, means mulberry, and its nourishment consists entirely of the leaves of the white mulberry tree, or “morus alba”, a tree which originates from the Asian regions around the Himalayas.

About forty days after hatching, having shed its skin four times and increased its body weight 10,000-fold, the silkworm stops feeding. The time has come to spin the cocoon.

The peasant family set up the “wood”, using interwoven dry twigs so that the caterpillars can climb onto them and spin the cocoon, attaching themselves to the twigs. The premises are made dark, and the silkworm, using the spinneret, an organ located underneath its mouth, begins to spin the cocoon by secreting a moist filament which hardens as soon as it comes into contact with the air.

As soon as the cocoon is finished (about 4 days) it is detached from the “wood” and immediately processed, before the metamorphosis of the caterpillar takes place and the chrysalis inside is transformed into a moth, emerging from the cocoon and in the process breaking the precious filament, which can measure up to 1,000 metres in each single cocoon.

If this is not done in time, and the small insect becomes a moth, once the nymphosis is complete, the moth emits a reddish secretion, dissolves the gum-like agglutinate substance which holds the threads together and, using a special file-like anatomical structure to cut through the fibres, emerges from the cocoon. In the span of just a few days, the entire cycle of the silkworm moth is complete: the mating, the laying of eggs and finally its death.

For centuries, silkworm farming has been the foundation of the economy of the peasant families in the rural areas of Zhejiang or Jiangsu, and even now mulberry tree growing represents one of their primary sources of income.

LEGAL NOTICE
All the contents of this website are covered by copyright. Any reproduction, even partial, for commercial purposes is permitted only upon prior written authorisation from Natural Fantasy® SpA. The statements included on this site regarding products, tests and legal regulations are intended as exemplary and concern only Italy. We reserve the right to modify the products and the characteristics and specifications of the same without any notice. Consequently the illustrations and texts on the website contain details which may not necessarily correspond to the current proposal.
This website has been created with the greatest possible precision. Despite this, we can assume no responsibility as regards mistakes or the correctness of the information contained.
We decline any responsibility whatsoever for any damage directly or indirectly caused by the use of this website.