Cocooning

Half of our silkworms have entered the last instar and have started to feed on black mulberry leaves like crazy, as they should in the days before cocooning.
Some early birds have already started cocooning, but this time around I was more prepared: I had a cocooning structure ready and I recognize a little better the "cocooning symptoms".

The other half of our silkworms is a little bit late, which is a good thing, because on the next saturday the 11th of June we'll be having a whole day in Serralves dedicated to Silk production, including silkworm rearing and cocoon reeling demonstrations and workshops. I would like to get to the day with all the silkworm stages happening: eggs, worm, pupae and butterflies. Let's see if they don't play a trick on me.

The video is a timelapse, not real time, but this is the speed we feel they are actual feeding to when we spread the mulberry leaves and look back after 2 minutes to find they already ate everything.