The life cycle of the silk worm.... begins and ends with the egg. These eggs are about the size of a pinhead and are a milky white or a deep yellow colour when first laid, but then change to a grey colour tinged with dark purple after 6-7 days. A female silk moth lays around 200 eggs before dying. The young silk worms will normally hatch 12 days after the eggs are laid.

.......................................................................................... ......... When the worm first emerges it is black, tiny - 3mm long - and delicate. This is the start of its 28 days of life - during which it will eat ravenously and grow to 10,000 times its original size. The worm will undergo 4 periods of molting, each one lasting around 24 hours, during which the worm will neither eat nor move.

During this period of growth, the village silk producer is very busy. Keeping the worms healthy and developing normally is more than a full time job. The worms must be fed 3 times a day on fresh mulberry leaves - morning, noon, and night. These leaves need to be specially prepared to meet the changing needs of the growing silkworm. When worms are young, they require finely chopped young leaves which are picked from the top of the mulberry tree. As they grow older, the leaf sections increase in size, and the leaves are gathered from further down the plants stem.

Many factors contribute to the overall health of the worm, and the successful silk producer must manage them all with care. S/he must keep the rearing house free from disease and pests through regular cleaning, maintenance, and disinfection of tools and workers. The house must also be kept at a certain temperature, humidity and luminosity while preserving adequate ventilation. The worms must be spaced at the proper density on the feeding trays, and the trays should be kept free from excess waste and uneaten leafage. The worms must also be dusted with lime and papsol in order to prevent bacterial infection.

After around 28 days of hard work, the white worms have now grown to their full size of about 8cm long and 1.5cm wide. Soon they will turn a slightly yellowish hue and begin to look for a suitable place for creating their cocoon.

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Silkworms are very adaptive creatures and are able to build their cocoons on a variety of different surfaces in an assortment of creative ways. Although this works well for the silkworm, it does not always benefit the producer. Irregular cocoons are very hard to reel and much silk ends up wasted. Therefore, mounting must take place at the proper time with the proper apparatus. There are many different forms of cocooning frames which can be used, the rotary and the zig-zag mountage are just two examples.

The worm builds its nest by secreting two filaments from its mouth. One is a very thin strand of silk, and the other is a cord of gum called sericin. When exposed to the air, the two harden together and become one length of thread. Over the course of 3 days, the worm will slowly envelope itself in a cocoon by winding one continuous thread about itself in a figure eight pattern. As the worms busy themselves by building cocoons, the silk producer is also busy ensuring that the worms are distributed evenly on the mountage and that all excreted wasted is immediately disposed of.

After 5 days, the worm has turned into a dark brown pupa and the cocoon is ready to be harvested. The cocoons are plucked from their trays and sorted according to their quality. They are then cleaned and the outer floss - the loss threads surrounding the cocoon - is removed by hand. The floss is not thrown away, but is used for stuffing in blankets and pillows.