"These silkworms are working out so well, we might have to increase our colony tenfold next time!" Mark exclaimed after I told him how much our chicks relished the test caterpillars I'd tossed their way.

"Good idea," I replied.  "But we have to increase our mulberry planting first."  And that begged the question --- which variety or varieties should we be focusing on?

Although they're not large enough to provide many leaves for our miniature livestock this year, we actually have five mulberry varieties on the farm at the moment, so I decided to test them all.  The silkworms had already reached their fifth instar, at which point they're able to eat tougher leaves, so I tried to select nearly-mature leaves from all the trees at roughly the same toughness level.  (Younger leaves are always preferred by the silkworms, but some of the trees didn't have any young leaves available and I didn't want to mess up the experiment by using young leaves from some trees and old leaves from others.)

I labeled each leaf with a pen mark and placed one of each variety on top of the silkworms, trying to cover approximately the same number of caterpillars with each leaf.  After about twenty minutes, I photographed the results:


The Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) was slightly more palatable than my previous experiment suggested, but this was definitely the silkworms' least favorite offering.  I gave this species a D for silkworms.

(As a side note, I didn't take a picture but I did try out a Chicago Hardy Fig leaf in a previous taste test.  The theory is that figs are in the same family as mulberries and osage oranges, both of which silkworms will eat, so figs might be similarly edible.  Our caterpillars did lightly taste the fig leaf, but soon moved on to the mulberries, suggesting that figs probably wouldn't even work in a pinch the way Paper Mulberries might.)

I had guessed Oscar's Mulberry (Morus alba) would be the tastiest of the selection since the leaf felt less rough and more tender than other varieties' leaves of the same age.  And the silkworms did enjoy this offering, but I'd say they rated it more of a B+ than an A.

Silk Hope (Morus alba x M. rubra) also seemed to be a B+ offering, which is actually better than I thought the variety would do from what I've recently learned about its history.

Moving on to the A-grade mulberries, the Illionis Everbearing (Morus alba x M. rubra) tree I've been feeding to the silkworms since the beginning of their lives was well received.  Notice how the silkworms have eaten over half of the leaf in the twenty minutes alloted to the experiment!

And now for the surprise grand-prize winner --- a random rootstock mulberry!  Two of the Illinois Everbearing Mulberries we put in a few years ago died back to the ground due to neglect, and what popped back up was clearly not the named variety.  Our mulberry source reports this is Morus alba variety Tatarica, and I'm now considering letting these trees grow for the silkworms rather than grafting a more tasty variety on top.

I want to repeat this experiment a few more times to ensure the location of the leaves within the bin didn't impact the results, and I'd also like to test some of our native Red Mulberries once I track down a source.  Finally, when we hatch our second batch of silkworms, I want to run a taste test on much younger caterpillars to see if they're more or less picky at that age.  But for now, I'll leave you with a video showing the speed with which a 19-day-old silkworm chows down on a new leaf.  Inspiring, isn't it?

Our starplate chicken coop is currently about a third to halfway completed, so I thought I'd sum up my thoughts on this first phase of the construction process.  As you'll recall, I was looking for several functional features in our newest chicken coop, and Mark really wanted to build something that would look aesthetically-pleasing in the landscape.  Is the starplate system the best solution?

Ease of building.  Having taught myself to build using conventional methods the hard way (the internet combined with lots of trial and error), I have to admit that the starplate system is easier to figure out...if you've never built anything before.  However, if you already know a bit about building (as we now do), the starplate system is annoying because you have to learn a new method, which is just as un-intuitive as the more mainstream way was at first.  If you don't know how to build in either manner, though, I suspect the starplate system would be easier to pick up.  Plus, we discovered you can build a starplate coop flat on a sloped hillside without leveling the ground first, a method that would be extremely difficult with a stick-built coop.  So this one is a tossup, leaning toward the starplate as a winner.

Cost.  The starplate system definitely costs more.  Sure, the structural integrity of the triangles means you use less framing lumber, but I'm pretty sure you use more of just about everything else, and you have to cut it all at an angle too.  Plus, you end up adding extra framing pieces back into the middle of the triangles to match up the cut ends when filling in every other wall (unless you take out one piece and overlap the rest, as is shown in the photo above).  Total cost for the framing lumber and the wall in-fill materials has been $534.43, the kit cost $117.99, and we've yet to figure out the roof.

Aesthetics.  Here, the starplate system is a definite winner.  At each stage of the building process, our new coop has looked so pretty, I'd peer out the window just to take it in.  I can hardly wait to see it in all its finished glory.

If you want to read the step-by-step building process, check out Mark's posts on the subject:

• Framing, day 1
• Finishing the frame.  My additional tips: If you're going to use one of the optional modifications that allow you to create a barn door on the front, you'll need to brace those corners until you get the frame all the way together.  Also, the directions don't tell you whether to start with the roof or the walls --- start with the walls.
  
• Filling in the walls.  My additional tips: The best way to do this seems to be starting at the bottom of one wall, then carefully lining up each board so you can get it centered on that wall.  Then it's easy to draw a line on each end of the board to mark what to cut off.  The more precisely you center the boards, the easier it will be to cobble the end pieces back together to make the next wall.  A much easier method would have been to follow the instructions and cut each wall out of plywood, but it's tough to get 8-foot sheets of plywood into our farm, so we went for the boards instead.
  
• Continuing with the walls
• Trouble matching pieces

Stay tuned to our homesteading blog for day-to-day updates, and I'll post another sum-up here when we've made some more progress.

I learned a lot about silkworm management during weeks 1.5 to 2.5 of our first batch's life.  In fact, the information is enough for two or three posts, but my mother helped me see that not everyone thinks caterpillars are as adorable and fascinating as I do, so I won't turn this into the silkworm blog.

The big news is that I accidentally killed off two-thirds of my colony through mismanagement.  I'm not quite sure what did it, but the possibilities include:

1. Heat.  The silkworms fared well the first day when the temperatures in our trailer got up into the 80s, but the dieoff occurred on the second hot day.  So maybe it was just a delayed reaction?  (In case heat was the culprit, I moved our silkworms to the cool of the barn the next day.)
   
2. Tough leaves.  I've been very carefully picking only the mulberry leaves that are still pale green and slightly crinkly from youth, but I thought our caterpillars might be old enough to try slightly tougher leaves.  It's quite possible the old leaves were hard to eat, the heat dried them up prematurely, and our silkworms dehydrated as a result.
3. Cat flea medicine.  I put that scary flea medicine on our cats right before picking mulberry leaves on the morning of the die-off.  However, I'm 95% sure I didn't get any of the chemical on my hands, and I think I washed my hands after applying the flea medicine and before picking the mulberry leaves.  But the reaction of our caterpillars was so extreme, I suspect this might have been the problem.

No matter what the cause, the silkworms stopped eating and even started running away from the mulberry leaves in search of better digs.  Here's where the sawdust on the bottom of the bin became problematic --- it was awfully tough to pick tiny caterpillars off the sawdust, and the sawdust tended to cling to their bodies even after I put them back on the leaves.  Probably sawdust isn't the greatest idea for the bottom of a silkworm bin.  (In retrospect, I don't think any sort of bedding is necessary.)

In more-pleasant caterpillar news, I ran a taste test to see whether our silkworms prefer our Illinois everbearing mulberry leaves or some paper mulberry leaves my mom brought over when she came to visit.  I alternated each type of leaf, then came back a couple of hours later to see which ones the caterpillars had moved onto.  It was a nearly unanimous vote for the Illinois everbearing, although, again, the reason is a bit uncertain.  Even though I picked the youngest, least-wilted leaves from Mom's supply, the paper mulberries had been off the tree for hours while the Illinois everbearing were fresh-picked.  Plus, I think it's possible silkworms could learn a certain variety of mulberry and want to stick with it --- aren't all youngsters picky eaters who want what's familiar?  I'll run another taste test with homegrown paper-mulberry leaves at some point, but for now will stick to our Illinois everbearing mulberry.

In a way, it was a blessing in disguise that we lost so many of our silkworms during the great dieoff because our one mulberry tree was running itself ragged trying to keep up with the caterpillars' appetites.  A week later, even the smaller population of silkworms was starting to eat us out of house and home.  So I decided it was time to prepare for the chicken taste test suggested by one of our readers by freezing a dozen silkworms every couple of days.  Next week at this time, I might have results to share with you, so stay tuned!

Each one of our flocks has a different personality, despite being made up of the same breeds.  I've started to realize it all depends on the lead chicken --- if he or she is a homebody (like our current rooster), everyone sticks close to the coop.  On the other hand, whoever is in charge of our youngest set of broilers is a flyer, thus the chickens in the trees and the current failure of our usual temporary pasture.

Our little broilers made short work of the pasture we installed them in after they lost their free-range privileges, so after a week and a half, we moved them to a temporary pasture in the forest garden.  My goal was to let them graze in grassy spots throughout our core homestead --- I figured I had at least four or five areas where they wouldn't cause any trouble.

For two days, the six-week-olds were quite happy to chow down on lush grass and weeds.  But then they started thinking how nice the mulched trees on the other side of the fence looked.  Soon, most of the flock was outside the fence, rather than inside.

So we moved on to Plan B, pulling the brooder outside the fence that encircles our core homestead and letting them run free in the woods.  Peace at last!

One of our readers suggested clipping their wings, which would definitely work.  But since these guys are only going to be around a few more weeks, it seems easier to just give their flyer-leader somewhere that he can live as he pleases.  I'm just glad this isn't the batch of broilers who are going to give us our layers for next year or we'd be in for eighteen more months of flighty chickens.  (Is that like breaking a mirror and getting seven years of bad luck?)

I'll start this post by jumping right to the punch line and telling you how I --- nature girl, friend of all things that creep, crawl, and slither --- threw my shoe at a perfectly harmless black rat snake.  It was a cute snake too, didn't startle me in the least, but my intent was to cause harm...or at least to get that reptile out of my barn.

Remember how I told you that our broody hen lost one of her chicks a few days after they hatched?  I heard a ruckus, ran into the barn, and found our eight-chick flock down to seven.

Well, I was hanging out with the broody hen and her chicks a few days later, when she started acting oddly.  Mama Hen called all her chicks to her side and backed away from the wall, her feathers puffing up.  Then in crawled a black rat snake, making a beeline for those tasty morsels.

I knew at once that this snake had been the murderer of chick number eight, and I was bound and determined not to let it happen again on my watch.  I couldn't actually walk toward the snake because it was on the other side of the hen, and I was afraid that if I made any sudden moves, the hen would figure the snake was the least of her worries and lead her chicks into harm's way.  So off came my shoe.

The footware landed directly on the snake's head, but, unfortunately, it was really just a slipper and barely phased the chick-hunter.  He did try to strike the shoe, though, which pushed Mama Hen over the edge from defensive to offensive.  She flew at the snake, and the snake hit the road.

I'd like to say the episode talked me into moving our smallest flock to a more secure location, but it didn't.  The dangers of trying to gather up seven chicks in a cluttered barn without losing any seemed to outweigh the benefits of the move, so I left them alone, and Mama Hen does seem to have been fending off all future snake attacks.  I wonder if the predator that used to pick off our chicks before we secured their brooder was actually a snake, not a rat?

What a nice surprise --- Bocking 4 comfrey has beautiful purple flowers!  Now I'm wondering if my unnamed (family hand-me-down) comfrey with whitish flowers is actually Russian comfrey after all, or if it might be Common comfrey.  It will be interesting to compare and contrast the two species, both in the garden and in our chickens' bellies.

No news on the edibility front yet, though, since this comfrey is planted on the non-chicken side of one of the pasture fences.  This spring, I also added a red currant to that mulched strip, which will arch into the pasture once it's big enough, just like the comfrey will.  I really like this planting alternative better than the other option (protecting perennials inside the pasture from chicken damage for the first year or two so they can get established).

The chickens tell me they're waiting with baited breath for the additions to their diet.

Silkworms grow so much during their short lifetimes that they have to pop out of their skins four times before even considering turning into moths.  You can tell your caterpillars are about to molt when they stop eating for about a day and sit with their heads in the air.  That's your warning that by tomorrow you'll need a lot more leaves.

The silkworms pictured above have just molted for the second time.  At eight days old, they seem to be eating twice as quickly as they were just two days earlier (pictured below), when the insects were mere second-instar (instead of third-instar) caterpillars.

The table below sums up what's to come in the days ahead:

One of our cuckoo marans turned into quite a troublemaker when we moved the flock from the woods to the pasture this spring.  She kept flying over the fence and showing up in the garden, even after we clipped her wings.  I knew she wanted to go broody, but after I discovered her spot in the straw and made it more conducive to laying (adding a chicken waterer and a dish of food so she wouldn't have to leave), she figured that spot was tainted and left it.  So when the hen stopped showing up entirely a week or so later, I wasn't sure whether she'd gone into some predator's belly due to wandering the woods without her rooster, or whether she'd finally found a spot to sit on a clutch of eggs.

"Peep, peep, peep!" greeted me when I entered the barn on May 23.  The sound helped me track down our broody hen in a terrible location on slanted, bare soil up against a hole in the barn wall.  Despite the less-than-perfect conditions, our cuckoo marans had managed to hatch eight perfect chicks out of nine eggs.  The dud had rolled away at some point and gotten too cold to survive.

Rather than trying to catch her right away, I moved the dish of food and the waterer to the hen's corner.  Unlike our cochin hen, the marans did moan at me when I got close the first time, but she quickly realized I was a help, not a hindrance, and let me approach without attacking.

Unfortunately, the marans' lower aggressive instinct worked against one of the chicks.  As I was weeding a few days later, I heard squawking from the barn and ran in to discover we were down to seven chicks.  I guess it's necessary to move chicks to a secure location even if they have a mother hen to watch out for them.

Two days after hatching, our silkworms were growing fast.  No longer did they make tiny little holes in mulberry leaves.  Now they turned each meal into a skeleton, then wanted more within a couple of hours.

I quickly learned that silkworms will migrate to fresh leaves within minutes if you simply place the old leaves on top of the new ones.  As the silkworms get older, we may have to start removing old leaves, but there currently doesn't seem to be any issue leaving them to dry up below the fresher material.

Although none of the instructions I read mentioned this, I'm glad I left the eggs in the bottom of the bowl for the first couple of days because silkworms, like chickens, don't seem to hatch all at once.  I estimated we had about 100 sikworms by the end of day one, but then another big batch hatched out and we ended up with perhaps 300 or more.  It's easy to tell at a glance whether the majority of your eggs have hatched since empty eggs are white instead of blue-gray.

As meal-time began to encompass four or five leaves instead of one or two, I figured it was time to move our silkworms to larger quarters.  We're trying them out in a rubbermaid bin with sawdust on the bottom, just like they were chicks.  I'll report in a later post whether that works out or if we have to change gears.

Surrounded as they were by a vast field of rye, our second batch  of chicks still managed to get into trouble by the time they reached five weeks old.  Despite the fact that we've raised several other sets of chicks in this same spot over the last two years with all of them staying earth-bound, our current flock thought it would be a good idea to fly up into a young peach tree and run along the limbs.

To be honest, the youngsters probably weren't causing much trouble there (and might have even been eating pest insects), but they were also ranging further afield, and our strawberries are in the next zone over.  No way do I want chickens eating up those berries we slave and dream over all year.

So we loaded them up...

...and rolled them out.

Our miniature flock is now fenced into chicken pasture 1, which hasn't yet been grazed this year and is a chickweed paradise.  I suspect the chicks will run through the delicacies in about a week, at which point, we'll have to put on our thinking caps again.  For now, we're leaving the brooder on the yellow wagon for easy movement.