Comments by "Me Here" (@mehere8038) on "How Mountains Of Worm Cocoons Are Turned Into Expensive Silk In Vietnam | Big Business" video.

  1. silkworm moths can't actually fly, so sad to say that they didn't actually fly off, they were eaten by birds or something else if they vanished
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  2. Do you realise that microfibres from clothing are the primary source of ocean micro-plastics? If you want to wear plastic (polyester), you do that, but the ethical humans will be choosing the fabric options that cause the least harm to animals & the envirionment & that means silk over plastic Would love to know exactly how you think they feel pain while their brains are just liquid mush too! Cause that's what happens inside their cocoon! They go in a caterpillar, come out a moth. Their entire bodies just become liquid inside a shell while in that cocoon, so even IF insects were feeling pain at other times, they are most certainly not while in their cocoon period
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  3. oh really? What are these plant based alternatives huh? Let me tell you, it's 1, cotton! Cotton makes up 81% of all natural fibres produced on the planet. Wool is the only other fibre used for clothes production that is over 1% of total global fibre production! Now tell me, what are silk worms called when they feed on cotton huh? They're called "cotton boll worms" & do you know what you vegans do to them? You pay for them to be poisoned on mass, but instead of a painless death while metamorphising & in a state of brain mush, as happens to the pampered silk worms that are raised in sericulture, your cotton version of them are sprayed with masses of pesticides, causing them to rith in pain, spasming, vomiting, convulsing - for up to half an hour before they finally succumb to the effects of the poisons. Promoting that treatment of these worms over what it done to silkworms is soemthing only a cruel sadist would do! If you want to switch to wool, by all means go for it, but otherwise, you need to accept that silk is one of the kindest & most sustainable natural fibres on the planet
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  4. their poop is normally fed to cows too! Apparently cows find silk worm poop to be delicious & nutritious :S
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  5. I'm trying to figure out how they get the pupas out to eat, before reeling the silk, without cutting the cocoons, which causes them to become short strands, which drops their value. Some of the cocoons look cut too, so are they using them whole? Or are they cutting them? I'm confused
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  6. ​ @Alinax99  oh really? What are these plant based alternatives huh? Let me tell you, it's 1, cotton! Cotton makes up 81% of all natural fibres produced on the planet. Wool is the only other fibre used for clothes production that is over 1% of total global fibre production! Now tell me, what are silk worms called when they feed on cotton huh? They're called "cotton boll worms" & do you know what you vegans do to them? You pay for them to be poisoned on mass, but instead of a painless death while metamorphising & in a state of brain mush, as happens to the pampered silk worms that are raised in sericulture, your cotton version of them are sprayed with masses of pesticides, causing them to rith in pain, spasming, vomiting, convulsing - for up to half an hour before they finally succumb to the effects of the poisons. Promoting that treatment of these worms over what it done to silkworms is something only a cruel sadist would do! If you want to switch to wool, by all means go for it, but otherwise, you need to accept that silk is one of the kindest & most sustainable natural fibres on the planet
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  7. Mulberries are delicious! The silkworms are the same species as the bollworms that cause chaos in cotton crops too, but over time they have evolved to eat different plants, making silkworms & cotton bollworms cousins rather than the same. Presumably yes, they probably were a pest, or at least seen feasting on mulberry trees at some point yes
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  8. yeh, I thought it was India. I haven't checked recently, probably some way they can claim to be the second biggest... maybe in "golden silk"? They made a big issue out of it's colour, maybe that's why? Most countries try to whiten the silk not make it golden. In reality, the colour washes out during processing anyway
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  9. and poorer quality & if you'd ever raised your own silkworms, you'd know that it results in a slow, horrible death as the moths slowely starve to death, cause they're incapable of eating. The males must also be kept many kms away from the females, otherwise they work themselves into a mating frenzy until they die from it. Alternatively, you can leave them in together & the males will rap the females until they bleed & die & then of course all the fertile eggs they all lay need to be destroyed too. Much kinder to dispose of them once they've entered the cocoon & are transitioning into moths, with their brains being in a non-functional liquid state. That's what the cocoon's for, to protect them while they're in that state where they are incapable of functioning or protecting themselves. Even just leaving them outside in the sun for an hour or so is enough to cause them to die, but the boiling is an instant death, just to be sure there's no potential for suffering
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  10. HUGE difference in production between 1st & 7th too, something like 400,000 tonnes v 2,500 tonnes
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  11.  @Tarik360  I cook them with sugar & lime juice - when I have too many that is, Mulberry jam is delicious :) Stems are a pia doing that though! They're similar to blackberries & generally eaten raw as berries. Taste great, but really come into their own for kids, kids can climb the trees & eat the berries while doing so, plus use the leaves for silkworms. Birds love the berries too, which can be a bit of a drama if you hang washing outside to dry, as they tend to drop them all over the clothes, plus poop on the clothes with red/purple staining poop from the berries
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  12. Vietnam & China currently have a large land border between the 2 countries. Throughout much of history, that border has been in dispute/moving. It was certainly into Vietnam WELL before 552ad, cause the Han rulers in China had claimed Vietnam as "China" over half a millennium before that & held it for 1000 years, so "Vietnam" was a part of China at the time period you reference there
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  13.  @bankerdave888  I don't think they said they invented silk did they? Just that their silk manufacturing goes back 4000 years, which I can't find any evidence to dismiss, it was easy to get from China into Vietnam back then, even if kept out of western countries with great vigour. This video does have a lot of nonsense though, such as it's claims of Vietnam being second highest in the world in silk. That's India with 161,000 tonnes per year to Vietnam's 2,500 tonnes
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  14.  @someonewithsomename.4044  hmm, yeh I dunno then. I just had a look to confirm, India is second & Vietnam 7th, like you said. first result I got also had per capita silk numbers, I thought maybe that would put them on top, but nope, not even close. I have no idea where they're getting the numbers from with Vietnam's 2,500 tonnes to China's 403,000 tonnes (and India's 161,000 tonnes)
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  15. Alternative to plastics would be cotton according to peta wouldn't it? Cotton boil worms are cousins of silkworms. In cotton production, they are sprayed with pesticides on mass & can be seen spasming & vomiting as they die. Silkworms on the other hand metamorphosis while in their cocoon, meaning their brain is just liquid mush, in transition, incapable of anything at the time they are boiled & eaten. Or to put it another way, yup, you're exactly right, but it goes even further than you're saying & their claims that it's somehow ok to poison cotton boil worms, but not boil silk worms are purely hypocritical! Cotton causes far more deaths of the same critters than silk production does, but in silk production, the critters are well cared for & only euthinased at a point where they cannot feel anything (even if insects can ever feel something)
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  16.  @chihirostargazer6573  You are right that we dont' have proof that insects can't feel pain, but we do have proof their brain is not formed at the time they are being boiled & we also have significant proof that plants feel pain & are distressed by it & make a wide range of chemicals to try to combat the pain (many of which we use as pain treatments on ourselves) & also that they "scream" both in pain & in fear when they hear other plants being hurt. There is in fact FAR more solid scientific evidence proving plants are capable of responding to pain than there is for insects. A handful of insects have had some interesting results in terms of brain function capacity, but most are total duds on all testing. Meanwhile every plant that's been tested has shown remarkable results in awareness of pain & reacting to it in ways similar to what higher animals do. So if you want to increase welfare rules, best start with plants, then you can move on to the cotton boilworms & later the silkworms
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  17. ​ @chihirostargazer6573  it's an instinctual reaction. Try cutting the head off a cricket or grasshopper & then touching it's body. It will "recoil in fright" or jump away in EXACTLY the same way it did with a head & brain attached! You're anthropomorphisising reflex reactions that are scientifically proven to have NOTHING whatsoever to do with brain function. Again, scientific studies have PROVEN these sorts of reactions in plants are repeatable & consistent & result in the release of chemicals, travelling in the plant's version of the human nervous system & result in actions 100% consistant with how humans respond to pain, both with the various chemical releases that occur & also the manufacture & release of toxins that are effective in stopping the attacks on the plant that are causing the pain reaction, as well as being effective in warning surrounding plants of the imminent attack, which prompts the surrounding plants to also initiate that "fight" reaction, so as to reduce or prevent attacks on it - the types of attacks that we know in humans are responsible for pain. We simply do NOT see these effective pain avoidance strategies in use in insects. If you rip off a cricket's leg, it doesn't limp, it continues on without reacting to the removal in any way after that initial reflex withdrawal action has been completed. This is consistent with what we know about insects lifecycle. In humans & higher animals, best survival strategy is to rest & recover from the injury, hence the purpose in pain. Due to the short lifecycle in insects, any that take time out to rest & recover from an injury die before they can reproduce & therefore, if they ever did develop the ability to feel pain, that individual would be automatically eliminated from the gene pool & would not pass on those pain feeling genes to any other in it's species, so it's simply irrational to think insects feel pain. I'm not ruling out the possibility completely, but I'm saying they are the least likely creatures to feel pain, far less likely than plants are, so you need to care much more about plant pain than you do about insect pain. Only the lifeforms with even shorter lifespans than insects are less likely than them to feel pain, this means viruses & bacteria probably don't feel pain either, just like insects
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  18.  @aspergillusoryzae3722  exactly!
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  19.  @chihirostargazer6573  ok sure, but you need to start with plants, cause that's where the strongest evidence lies. If you eat insects, you can reduce the number of plants you need to torture to death for your food & fabric. If you really want to reduce your impact though, eating feral or overpopulated animals & waste products that are otherwise disposed of are even better still. Animals like feral pigs, deer & kangaroo are a good start if you really want to be compassionate to all living creatures
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  20. ​ @chihirostargazer6573  Yes I agree it should be reduced. I dont' think there's any doubt that chickens feel pain, so nearly 80 billion of them raised for food per year is unnecessarily high. We really should imo be eating larger animals that therefore require FAR less deaths to feed us The numbers on how many animals raised are chickens, compared to the total of other animals is insane! We also obviously need to address the "oil seed cake" waste, cause that's what the chickens are fed on. There's 300,000,000,000 kgs of that produced annually & because humans refuse to eat it, it needs to be disposed of, hence the chickens & what's left over then going to fish & pigs. That's enough waste, just in oil seed cakes alone, to feed 100 billion chickens from birth to slaughter weight! We really need to change our thinking & either eat tht waste ourselves, or return to using animal fats in shampoos, detergents, washing powders etc, instead of clearing the Amazon & Indonesian rainforests to grow oil crops to use in those products, so as to give them lables of "no animal products used in making this product", all while disposing of animal fats into landfill, as toxic waste, cause of the switch to using "vegetable oils" in it's place - oils that need deforestation to be grown & producing masses of waste that then require livestock like chickens to eat it, so as to avoid mouse & rat plagues from poor management of the waste, or lung cancer & environmental damage from burning it - which is what used to happen in the days when slaves had that job of burning it, so no-one cared
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  21. yeh, I don't understand why they don't! This is one of the first bits machines are normally created for in silk production, all it needs is some sort of wheel to spin to unreel the silk from the cocoons. Any spinning wheel can do it, but generally it's more basic wheels used
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  22. per kilo of plant based fabrics produced, 1000 times more of these same caterpillars are poisoned to death with pesticides, than need to die in silk production
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  23.  @Alinax99  you should be ashamed, not proud! Your head is in the sand & you simply deny the animal deaths you cause!
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  24.  @dhanhyaa  there's no such thing as "vegan" silk (or vegan at all actually)
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  25. ​ @Alinax99  no, I'm "one of those people" who genuinely cares about animals & consequently "gets so pissed" when selfish attention seekers find ways to hurt masses more animals than necessary, so as to get personal attention as they falsely claim to be "helping animals". I have no idea what you are claiming to be "vegan silk", but there's no question it causes FAR more animals deaths & suffering than real silk does! Not that you care, you only care about personal attention don't you
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  26.  @Alinax99  don't you have more silkworms you need to go poison? Calling them "cotton crop pests" doesn't mean it's somehow ok to torture them to death & that you're somehow morally superior to others cause you rant about being a "vegan" without even having a clue what that actually means
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  27. yup, something wrong with the info on this. Normally the cocoons are unwound & then the pupae eaten, I can't figure out what they're doing here! It does actually look like there's cut marks in at least one of the cocoons in the video, but yeh, if there is, that breaks the thread & drops it's value massively!
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  28. how about we start by talking about how their cousins are poisoned on mass when they eat cotton crops & how plastic clothing is responsible for ocean micro-plastics
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  29. If you look at Vietnam/China's history, you will see they are entangled a long way back too, therefore no reason silk wouldn't have been travelling between the 2 countries, especially during periods where China was claiming Vietnam was "part of China"
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  30. hmm bit of a sadist aren't you? You'd rather spray the worms with pesticides & watch them spasm & vomit & spin around appearing to be in agony for half an hour or so until they die? All right at the peak of their growing stage, when their brains are most active. You think that's better than waiting till the same species has turned to mush inside a cocoon & then boiling it for an instant death, while it's brain is liquid nothing?
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  31. and ki11 the fish!
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  32.  @onebyday6065  what alternatives?
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  33.  @onebyday6065  plastic you mean? Really not good for the fishes is it! Not good for the general environment either & doesn't breathe, so really not the same to wear!
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  34.  @onebyday6065  you do understand that "synthetic silk" is plastic right? & that over 80% of ocean microplastics are plastics (mostly polyester) used in clothing? Plastics are causing FAR more harm to animals & the environment than silk production is!
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  35.  @onebyday6065  1. this isn't being done in the US, it's being done in Asia, where all your clothes are made 2. do you honestly not understand at all where micro-plastics come from? What do you do with the micro-plastics you collect from your washing machine? I mean you DO collect them from your washing machine right?
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  36. ​ @onebyday6065  you make your own clothes from plastic? where do you get the raw materials from for that? Oh yeh, China! Clearly you don't grow your own cotton or hemp or use bamboo for clothing, or you wouldn't be saying what you are. You might want to try making fibres from them to see how they work! Cotton requires controlling cotton bollworms in their thousands, billions for commercial farms, with poisons - bollworms of course being silkworms! Hemp, if you can't grow it, you can grow linen/flax & see the same process & see how polluting & harmful the reeting is Bamboo you won't be able to do into clothing fibres wool, if you do it ethically is a good option. Be sure to avoid angora, as it near universally comes from rabbits in China treated incredibly cruelly! Silk is absolutely better than plastic, cotton or hemp in terms of animal deaths & environmental destruction!
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  37. ​ @onebyday6065  Let me explain the basics of what microplastics are to you. Have you ever used a clothes drier? Ever collected lint out of it from your polyester clothing or polyester/cotton blend clothing? that lint is microplastics when it comes from plastic clothing like polyester! THAT is the source of the world's ocean's microplastics! Scientists that study this stuff can actually tell you where in the world a water sample comes from, based on the microplastics in it & clothing worn in the area, cause that's what microplastics are! There are in fact washing machine micro-plastic filters available that you can put onto your drain to collect the microplastics & bin them instead of flushing them into waste water systems, where they are pumped into the oceans, but they must be emptied every load & people don't want to do that, so washing machine manufactures refuse to build them into washing machines. Each time you wash a polyester clothing item without that filter (and you clearly don't have that filter, since you don't even know what I'm talking about with it), you are flushing micro-plastics into the oceans! Silk is expensive & lasts for a long time & doesn't break down with exposure to UV rays, making it FAR more sustainable than plastics in every way! If you want to pretend you're trying to move towards living sustainably, you need to understand stuff like this! GMO cotton btw also results in far less silkworm/cottonworm deaths than organic cotton does, so just some additional info for you there too IF you're serious about trying to be sustainable. Growing your own food is good, especially if you're actually serious about that & actually grow your own calories, such as wheat. Growing your own food allows you to see the processes involved in crop production & if you buy food later, at least you understand for real the impacts of each food. Clothing is the same, best way to learn is to try growing at least one plant of each & going through the process of turning it into usable clothing fibres, that way you can actually understand what's really sustainable & what's just propaganda
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  38.  @onebyday6065  ok, so to clarify, you're on tank water & when you wash your clothes or shower, the water drains onto your garden as you do not have water pipes that take that water away from your home? Well then, you might want to ensure you don't grow your food where that water is draining, cause otherwise you're eating food grown in microplastics! For fibres, silkworms would be a great option for you! Why not plant a mulberry tree for it's fruit & consider if you want to get some easy fibres at a later date with silkworms? Far less deaths with those than for any other crops! How many bugs do you think your chickens eat? WAY more than you would with silkworms! Plenty of other fibres you could grow if you want to too, flax/linen is an obvious one to try, so is jute or new Zealand flax if you want fibres for tying up plants etc, hemp too if you're allowed. With any of these things, it's best to grow just a couple of plants to start with anyway & get a feel for them before deciding if you want to grow them large scale, so the tilling shouldn't really be a huge issue with that in mind. The rougher fibres used in sacks, garden twine etc tend to be perennials that don't need tilled soil anyway & good for you for actually doing all this! Please reduce your synthetic clothes though, cause with a circulatory system like that, you are ingesting all the plastics you are wearing & that's really not good for you!
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  39. ​ @onebyday6065  plastic isn't nature. cotton bollworms & silk bollworms (shortened to just silkworms) are the same bugs, so if you wear cotton, same bugs die in the process, but in much larger quantities in cotton production & they do so at the peak of life & rith in pain for hours in the process. Cotton is the ONLY natural fabric produced as an alternative to silk in any sort of quantity. Wool has some issues (mulsing), but is probably the best option re animals, but doesn't directly replace silk, it's for warm applications, silk is for cool. Linen & hemp are too environmentally damaging to be able to be produced at the same levels as cotton (silk is also too labour intensive to compete). Jute etc work great for their purposes, such as sack making, but again don't directly compete with silk. Leather too, if waste product is used & it is done without chemicals, is also a great option, but it's very rare to find it chemical free & mostly only in saddles etc that need hard materials, again certainly not competing with silk. Silk is legitimately one of the kindest fabrics available to the animals, environment & the people involved. Silk is even regularly used as a viable option for women escaping domestic violence to be set up to become financially independent. The caterpillars go into their cocoon & totally transform. Their heads come out a different shape & instead of being squishy, they come out hard. While it's hard to study & confirm exactly, it's really not believed that it's possible for their brain to be in any way functioning while it's being completely transformed like that, hence why they build the cocoon to protect themselves for that period where they have no brain function. They therefore can't feel pain if they die during that process (unlike the cotton ones that die while actively eating & moving around prior to building cocoons)
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  40. ​ @onebyday6065  lol not very good research! You've got the land, so I suggest you grow all these various crops, at least one plant of each & actually learn for yourself the reality! You can grow Egyptian cotton if regulations stop you growing GMO cotton. I very much doubt there's any regulations prohibiting you growing regular cotton, but tree/Egyptian cotton will get you around any you think exist & no-one's going to be checking your greenhouse for a single cotton plant anyway! You probably should be asking why those regulations exist though, cause what you'll find will add to your education on the issues with these fibres. You can also grow linen/flax, there is absolutely NOTHING stopping you doing that! That is the simplest one to grow. Notable how you keep ignoring my suggestion to grow that isn't it! You're deliberately choosing to claim to want to grow problematic fibres, instead of the fibres that are viable for you to grow! You can also grow New Zealand Flax & Jute without any issues at all! Bamboo is useless for you to grow as a fibre, you cannot possibly make it into fibre yourself! There's a reason bamboo fibre only became a thing in the 21st century, it is simply impossible to make into fibre without very advanced machinery & chemicals & industrial processes. You're just trolling when suggesting you will grow bamboo for fibre! Same with wood! You can of course also VERY easily grow your own silkworms & make silk! You can also grow a range of other animal fibres, such as regular wool & humane angora wool from goats or a couple of well cared for bunnies & using sheering instead of ripping the wool off them, leaving them bald & bleeding (which is how industrial angora is produced). You can also make fibres from plants like nettles & do so MUCH more easily than from "wood" or bamboo! Cotton is the only natural fibre produced at scale for clothing, so to address your ridiculous claim that it can be grown in greenhouses, the world produces 27 million tonnes of cotton per year, at half a tonne per hectare (that's a football stadium sized building) so no, you can NOT grow it in greenhouses at the needed levels can you! Cotton makes up less than 1/3rd of fibres used globally, cause even 27 million tonnes doesn't come close to global needs, so most fibres are produced in plastic factories instead. You're also missing the complexity of the harvesting & ginning equipment needed for cotton production & it's size & incompatibility with greenhouses GMO is your best bet if you want to reduce bug deaths with cotton, as GMO can be designed to dead the bugs as soon as they bite it, therefore preventing them being able to multiply to begin with. Still more harmful than silk though Exactly what is your objection to sticking some linseeds into the ground in this land you claim to own?
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  41. ​ @onebyday6065  indoors? You've now moved from being able to grow it in greenhouses to fully indoors? You're going to build 50 million football stadiums to grow cotton in???? Cause that's the size you need to grow current cotton harvests indoors! You can NOT build that many buildings to grow cotton in! Anything can be grown in greenhouses or indoors, but it is simply not viable to do so for the vast majority of farm production! Your cotton clothing that you buy will NOT be coming from indoors, unless YOU grow it, which you have already made excuses for not doing. Yes, there are major pest issues with cotton & so regulations around growing it because of the amount of bugs that already need to be murdered to produce it, let alone if some hippy grows plants & refuses to cull the bugs on theirs & lets them get into nearby crops! Notice how there are no restrictions on the growing of mulberry trees or silkworms? That's cause there's no issues with bugs with them, no pesticides needed on the trees, FAR less animals dead from silk than from cotton! There is not going to be an issue with growing 1 cotton plant in a greenhouse though is there! When you do that, you say you can stop the bugs getting in, therefore also stop them getting out, therefore authorities aren't going to have an issue with you growing that are they! They will also not have any issues with you growing your own linen, yet you still refuse to do that, ranting about wood fibres, which you know (if you've done the research you claim) that you cannot use to produce fibres & clothing for your family! Linen, cotton, silk & wool are the only fibres feasible for you to use to make your own clothing for your family (along with nettles, hair etc etc if you really want to go down the path of using true traditional options) You're not inspiring anyone, cause you're not doing it! I personally HAVE grown cotton, linen, silk, angora wool & others AND I have a wooden weaving loom I made myself, AND a drop spindle I made myself (6 of them actually, cause more than 1 is needed for easy plying) AND I have actually completed the entire process from seed to material piece with the various fibres, and knitting btw is MUCH faster & more efficient in making clothing than weaving on a hand made loom, no matter how well you make the loom! Because I personally have the experience, I can easily see through your excuses & see that you have no intention of ever actually making anything & quite frankly don't even appear to be growing any of your own food, like you claim, given you are now saying you're not allowed to plant any plants in your state! I also grow all my own plant based foods. I have only a tiny garden, but I use efficient space techniques & indoor growing techniques & mushrooms to maximise my yield. I only buy in meat, I do intend on growing a batch of chickens myself for food, so as to see the whole process & understand it & also get the bi-products, feathers etc for use as well, but I haven't done that yet, only meat I've grown to date is bugs. I don't make my own clothes from scratch, there's just no way that's viable! I've done the process to see how it works & from that I know it's not viable. It's not like whacking some potatoes/sweet potatoes in the ground & harvesting 100kgs of food out of it! Fibre production yields VERY little & needs LOTS of work to turn it into clothing! Far worse than even dehulling grains is! (if you genuinely grew your own food, you would know what I'm referring to with that comment! You don't I'm sure, but you would if you were legit
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  42.  @onebyday6065  & btw I grow my own bamboo too, but it's for SENSIBLE, viable uses, such as garden stakes, NOT for fabric! For plant ties to the bamboo, if making my own, I use hair or silk from the outside of cocoons. That can be very easily hand twisted together to form a reusable rope/tie that will last basically forever. Certainly outlasts the stakes, even when using bamboo, as opposed to sunflower or native ginger or yacon stems, that I also frequently use as single season stakes either while growing, or the following season
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  43. ​ @onebyday6065  Do you have any stores near you that sell foods package free in quantities of your choice? We have those where I am, stores where you go in & scoop from bulk containers of grains & beans & put into paper bags & then pay for by weight. I suggest going into a store like that, if you have one, & scooping from every container that has a whole grain/bean & planting. I did that many years ago, scooped just a small amount, in many cases too little for it to even register, in other cases around 5cents worth (I did speak to the staff member before doing it & asked if I could just scoop some of everything into a single bag & just pay the most expensive price for the lot, but stupidly she said no, so weighed each of the 50 or so bags I had individually). I also bought the most diverse birdseed I could find & planted that & later also found a bulk/select & pay animal produce store where I could do the same thing with any remaining grains I hadn't grown yet. So I personally have grown almost every grain & bean available. In most cases, I grew 2-3 seeds in 1 kratky hydroponics set up milk bottle, so as to save space, easily lable & avoid weeds & know for sure what I had in each. I was surprised how many of the dried beans were dwarf beans, everything from pinto to navy to soy are dwarf! The grains surprised me with how long they took to dry after growing, I was thinking how fast they were to produce, but then had a 3 month wait on the plant while they matured/dried, rice being the only exception to this, drying very quickly & being ready for harvest in about half the time of all the others, like wheat, spelt, oats, amaranth, quinoa, millet, panicum, sorghum etc etc, then of course came the hard part with grains like rice & spelt & oats, with needing to dehull them before they could be eaten. I would highly recomend growing 1 or 2 of each plant in this way if you want to understand growing processes. Some seeds I wasn't able to get in this way, or the ones I got weren't fresh enough to germinate. Cotton I got from a local agricultural show, where they were giving away little packets of seed to kids to encourage their interest in cotton. After chatting with the guy about growing & how I was curious & growing all my own crops, just to see the process, he gave me about 10 packets of seed, cause he liked that I was interested. I only had space for a couple of plants, but it was still great to get the seed tehre, cause previously I'd only managed to get the tree/Egyptian cotton & after 2 years of growing, I had a nice big shrub/tree, but only 2 pods of low quality cotton. The agricultural show seeds grew nice & fast & yielded nice & high, but it still made it abundantly clear how little yield is achieved per plant & how much space is needed for cotton crops. Same with soybeans, I was surprised at how low the yield was, but researched to find that 20 pods per plant is the average in commercial farms - that's 50 individual beans total per plant! Mulberry tree I grew from seeds in a punnet I bought to eat. I keep that to only a small shrub, as I don't have space for bigger. I harvest the berries as food each year & then bring my silkworm eggs out of hibination & feed them all the leaves & prune the tree in the process, ready for next year. I keep some bugs to breed & with the rest, I fridge (which puts insects to sleep but doesn't harm them) & then once I've ensured I have males & females & they've breed, I put the sleeping bugs into the freezer, so they don't wake up again. If I don't havve the males & females, I get some more from the fridge & take them out & they begin their growing process again once removed from hibination. Having done a lot of wild lizard rescues with a wildlife rescue organisation, I'm quite aware of bug management, fridge to slow them down so the sick reptiles can catch & eat them is a nesesary part of that. Only exception I've found is with maggots, even in a low level freezer, their life cycle doesn't pause. Anyway for the silkworms, I put them to sleep, then freeze, then put the cocoons into the sun once they're dead, so as to remove all moisture, then I store until I have enough to actually spin the silk, cause otherwise it's too wasteful, with each cocoon being a different length. The fluff around the outside of the cocoon I use immediately for stuff like plant ties. Once the eggs have been laid, I leave them to turn grey & then fridge for next year & the moths I feed to birds (not that there's anything at all inside them for the birds to eat). Without inducing their death in this way, the males will get excited & flap themselves to death, or if there's females within their reach, they will rape them repeatedly, leaving them bleeding & eventually dying from this (mating lasts 12 to 24 hours in silkworms & the boys have a barb that connects them, so that the girl can't escape, no matter how much she tries to crawl away from the attached male) Most of my other plants I've obtained seeds, cuttings or plants from either grocery stores in the same way as the mulberry seeds, including plants like sugarcane, sweet potatoes & herbs, or from heirloom seed places eg yacon & painted mountain corn, or from regular seed suppliers & then in most cases I save my own seed for the next year & I grow as food the plants my experiments show give me the best yields & fit well in various parts of my garden. My back garden gets no sun in winter, so it only really grows oyster mushrooms during that time (in bags that I manage intensively). I also have the mulberry & other berries that go dormant in winter out there & manage to keep plants like lettuce sitting there, therefore staying fresh far longer than after harvest, even once the direct sun has gone for the year, so as to extend my growing season. This winter my coffee plant has had massive numbers of berries on it all winter too, not sure what's going on with that, still figuring it out. I got 3 coffee beans off it the year before last, then nothing the next year, then this past spring a tonne of flowers, taht became beans & now a year later, those beans are all still on it & all still green, so it's either a crop that produces only once every 2 years & takes that second year to mature the fruit, or that's what I get in my climate/garden, which is technically meant to be too cold to grow coffee. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with it & I've already experimented with the 3 beans I got last time to at least partly know the process after harvest. Linen also goes well put out there in winter. I'm still trying to figure it out, but it's one of the many plants that grows until daily sunlight levels change, so I've actually had linen up to 6 to 8 feet tall when grown out there at the right times, which tbh, is then a bit of a pain to try to reet. Grown in regular sunlight or times of year, it's generally only a couple of feet long & matures faster. White & blue flowering versions seem to be about the same in linen quality, snails being my biggest problem in reducing the quality, due to eating the linen off the stem. New Zealand flax is much easier to grow than regular flax & no snail issues, but I'm still figuring out the options to reet/process it, other than for getting course, grass skirt fibres. It seems to be a much tougher fibre & is a perenial that needs next to no care. Native grains, likewise are really tough & need next to no care, but yield to space is much lower with them I find. Anyway, in reality, no-one's going to be fining you if you keep a single plant in a controlled way a single time & do what you need to with bugs to prevent problems, which in your case would probably mean giving your chickens regular access to it, but there are PLENTY of options available to experiment & the way to find them is to look at what people have been primarily using for millenium, along with what grows most easily/what you can most easily find in stores & sticking it in the ground & seeing what happens. It's up to you if you're serious about growing stuff & experimenting or not, but actually growing stuff is definately the best way to actually learn the processes & difficulties. If you think that cultivation of the land for planting is a problem, then you might want to look up holistic grazing & do that with your chickens or get a couple of goats or sheep to do it with. Just putting them into a small area every night for a few weeks should leave you with that area ready to plant out without any additional work needed from you, so nice fast way to convert as much area as you want to. Best option is goats/sheep into the tiny area to trample it well for a few weeks, then rest if for a week, then put the chickens in there to eat any new weed shoots or maggots etc in the settling manure slurry & add their manure to it, then it's ready to go. You could even throw some wheat or linseed or barley or corn or whatever in their for the chickens & anything they miss will grow & give you crops of that (you'll want to add additional seed once the chickens have been locked out of the area, cause they'll get most, if not all the seed you put in). Tree planting areas can be prepared in the same way too, although personally I've had zero sucsess in getting any fruit from apricots, peaches, cherries etc that I have grown from seeds in bought fruit, even after many, many years growth.
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  44. well I guess that's what China gets for taking over Vietnam thousands of years ago huh lol they might have been stopping silk getting out of "China", but at the time, they considered Vietnam to be part of "China", therefore didn't stop it going there did they
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  45.  @thesilentone4024  you can't significantly decrease the costs on silk production, due to how much of it needs to be done by hand. What you can do though is stop being a slave to the fashion industry. Ok, so a silk garment will cost you at least 5-10 times what a polyester one will, BUT it will also last 20 times longer, so it's not expensive at all. You just need to use it right & care for it well once you buy it. Jockey "silks" & Saris in India are all made of silk btw, not at all a rare fabric, just one that's too expensive to make single season items out of. There has certainly not been a reduction in silk being farmed or made into garments, just an increase in sales of "disposable" plastic ones in addition to an increasing level of production of silk over recent generations. It's quite similar to leather in many ways, buy a good leather jacket & it will last you for decades, FAR longer than polyester fleece jackets will! Long term costs are not high at all for good quality fabrics - IF you value them & buy them for long term use.
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  46. ​ @Alinax99  lol oh dear! You REALLY need to educate yourself! 1. certain fibres are suitable for clothing, others are suitable for industrial uses, such as making sacks, mats or rough ropes for ships, agricultural use etc. Silk is NOT suitable for making sacks etc. Which of the fibres you just listed are suitable for the same purposes as silk? Not many are there! 2. I already gave you the stats. 81% of natural fibres in the world are cotton Jute-Kenaf and allied fibres are absolutely on the list of globally important fibres, huge amounts of grain & beans & other produce rely on these sacks to be moved around, as well as being the backing that binds carpets together. They make up almost 8% of global natural fibre production, but they have ZERO use in clothing or anything else silk is used for. Coir, likewise makes the cut, at 3% of global fibres, again for mats & ropes. Abaca-sisal-henequen and related are also nearly 3% & again are all unsuitable for clothing. So what are we left with? Linen? Less than 1% of global fibres, used to be big, until the world became environmentally aware, then fibres like linen & hemp that require retting that causes massive environmental damage fell out of favour. Hemp is at a ridiculously low 0.003% of global fibre production & I'm really not even going to bother with the experimental fibres. Do you honestly wear these fibres as your primary clothing source? You don't do you & if anyone in the world was going to, it would be people like you, but you don't, cause they're untenable. Like it or not, the alternative to silk is wool, cotton or polyester 3. organic farms are the worst offenders in terms of bug deaths in cotton farming, Non-organic have actually significantly reduced bug deaths in recent decades, by using GMO cotton that immediately dead's the bugs before they can take hold & breed, therefore reducing total death toll. The biological controls you speak of are NOT used in cotton production! The management of choice on "organic farms" is high levels of blood & bone & manure applied to the soil so as to make the plants as strong as possible, followed up by regular, scheduled spraying with pyrethrum - a natural pesticide from daisy plants, that can take up to 2 hours to dead a bug, the bug writhing in pain that entire time 4. speciesism can best be seen in someone who objects to silkworms being pampered their whole life, then painlessly disposed of at the most humane time possible, yet happily posions their cousins on mass when they feed on cotton. How can you morally be fine with cottonworm torture & death, yet object to silkworm humane death, when both are the same bug, separated only by a few thousand years of evolution in what they eat, with everything else about them being identical? 5. You REALLY need to educate yourself, not be a little pot calling a kettle black & thinking you're superior because you choose certain species to value & others to torture on mass - which IS what you do! You are all talk, but zero knowledge & zero actions on what you claim to believe! You do NOT choose fabrics that are less harmful, just fabrics you don't understand the damage connected to. Ignorance does not excuse torture though. Stop being a pot & go educate yourself!
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  47. ​ @linhl4710  I have raised silk worms at home, it's not really like beaded curtains, more like fabric curtains, cause the silk strand singular) is glued together. Trying to separate, for me at least, always results in ripping & the cocoon IS that single silk strand a mile long, once that single strand has been removed, there's nothing left to cut, there's just the pupa inside a shell/exoskeleton doing it's transformation thing. There's lots of short strands on the outside of the cocoon that form the net that holds the cocoon, that looks like what they're using as the pillow stuffing, but that's not the actual cocoon or thread used for silk garments. Once the worm moves from those outer threads to the actual cocoon, it spins non-stop until the cocoon is done, starting on the outside & steadily moving inwards towards itself as it continues & when it runs out of silk, that's it, it stops (I've had some I've fed on mixed stuff, not fully mulberry leaves & they regularly run out of thread before the cocoon is complete & leave it with a hole in the end, or just so thin it's transparent. Those ones never hatch, they die inside it, I guess cause the cocoon's not thick enough to give them the right climate conditions for their transformation or something)
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  48. seriously? Go to a local school & ask the kids if they will give you some of theirs (once you have enough mulberry trees growing to feed them all)
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  49. ​ @abdelhamidemarra7466  consider yourself lucky to get ANY reply to such a stupid question! Silkworm eggs are already plentiful in your country, importing from Vietnam is ridiculous & anyone with any serious interest in silkworm raising already knows that! Like I said, all the kids at schools in your country already know that & already raise them as school projects! You buy your eggs from the same places they do if you want silkworm eggs
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  50. 1 female silkworm lays 200-500 eggs. 1 male silkworm can easily fertilise 3 females, therefore they leave to hatch 3-5 of the best cocoons per 1000 cocoons harvested. Silk worms are certainly not in danger of going extinct lol their genes are improving all the time!
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  51.  @kerry-annpeters885  There's companies in most countries that sell batches of 20-100 silkworms, along with "silkworm chow" for people who don't have mulberry trees they can use to get the leaves from, so best way to learn about them is to buy a batch, that's what I did. I kept about 20 eggs to reproduce from to do another batch without having to buy more. I ended up with thousands upon thousands of eggs as a result. I also discovered that they only last 1 year in the fridge & if you defrost your fridge & warm them up, even for an hour or so, it will cause them to begin the hatching process & a few days later they will all hatch in your fridge, in the bags you stored them in - and die, cause you didn't know & so didn't feed them. I've done batches of about 100-300 every year now for about 4 or 5 years though, is kinda fun :) I'm learning more about them everytime I do a batch
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  52.  @kerry-annpeters885  what the? I just gave you a reply & it's not here anymore. NO IDEA what on earth caused that! I save comments cause of this crap, so have it here & will try redoing it in parts, will just check if this stays first
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  53.  @kerry-annpeters885  ok first bit I'm in Sydney, so can help you on that :) I bought them from "Everything Silkworms" There was a whole list of companies that came up when I did a search, many with much cheaper prices, BUT I waited months & all remained out of stock the whole time. There was one other company I found that did have stock, but they were even more expensive than the everything silkworm one. Silkworms are expensive in Australia compared to other countries :(
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  54.  @kerry-annpeters885  second bit If you have access to a mulberry tree, you can generally buy just the eggs/silkworms on gumtree too. They'll eat around 10 HUGE leaves or 20 regular sized ones per worm, around 7 of those in their final stage before the cocoon ie in the last 5-7 days. Is deceptive in how much they eat, seems like nothing, until that final stage, then they just don't stop! So just be ready for that if planning on feeding on leaves not "silkworm chow" Probably best to wait at least about a month before getting them too, cause they don't really like the cold. I have a small mulberry tree/shrub, it's just starting to get spring leaves now, not yet at the point where it's ready to support silkworms, which is a good guide that it's the wrong time of year for them, even if raising them on chow.
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  55.  @kerry-annpeters885  third bit Definitely a fun activity to do imo :) Incredible how TINY they are in the beginning compared to how big they become by the end. I tend to find instinctively I don't really want to touch them when they're tiny, but then as they get bigger, I find that changes. By their last stage, I find it hard to resist picking them up & handling them, there's something really cute about them :). They have 5 stages of growth & in between each, they go into a freeze type position for a day or so, then they crawl out of their skin & have a new mouth, that's about double the size of the last one each time (it's actually growing/developing just above their one they're using at the time, then when they're ready, they crawl out of their old skin, brush off their old mouth & start using the new one. By the final stage, they can be heard eating too, sounds like rain, quite relaxing :)
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  56.  @kerry-annpeters885  fourth & last bit Start saving empty toilet rolls now too if you're going to do them, cause empty toiletrolls is the easiest option for them to make cocoons in. You can use other stuff too though if you want to/have to cause of a lack of toilet rolls, or they'll just use the corner of the container you put them in. They just tend to waste more silk on their cocoon holding webbing in those options though, so less on the cocoon. & big worms & cocoons are the girls, little ones are the boys. Girls are bigger, due to more eggs in their body
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  57.  @kerry-annpeters885  Glad it posted this time. Would love to know why on earth it didn't before! wtf is in that to cause it not to? Weird sight! Anyway, good luck with it & glad to be able to help you :)
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  58. ​ @Layput  China kept it from the west until much more recently than 4000 years ago, but a quick bit of research tells me it was absolutely in Asia, outside China 4000 years ago & doesn't seem to be anything suggesting Vietnam couldn't have had it then (I just haven't, with quick research yet found confirmation from non-Vietnam sources of this) Couple of quote's I found Allusions to the fabric in the Old Testament show that it was known in Western Asia in biblical times. & The earliest examples of silk production outside China are from silk threads discovered from the Chanhudaro site in the Indus Valley civilisation, which are dated to 2450–2000 BC. The analysis of the silk fibres shows presence of reeling and sericulture You may also want to remember that VIetnam shares a land border with China & throughout recorded ancient history has been in conflict with China over where exactly the borders are, with Vietnam being under Chinese control for 1000 years from over 2000 years ago. Really doesn't seem at all unreasonable to think they also had silk there when you think about it properly does it!
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  59. ​ @Layput  it doesn't just "border" china, it's cultures overlap with China's, so if China had something in it's south in times before clear history on borders is available, then you need to show that the north of Vietnam was not included as part of South China or accept that at this stage there's simply not the evidence to claim to the contrary, otherwise Vietnam can claim it, in much the same way as people can claim gods caused something, until it can be disproven. The Hoabinhian & Dongsonian cultures in particular have clear evidence that they overleaped both South China & Vietnam in where they existed & as such it is reasonable to assume, based on currently available evidence, that anything they were using was in both China & Vietnam. The Han taking control of Vietnam likewise means it goes without saying that anything they had & allowed to spread within their territory could be found in Vietnam too. To say otherwise is a bit like saying Roman roads were ONLY found in Rome & not in any other parts of Europe. Of course that's not true, they took them into all parts of Europe they travelled into. Not looking for evidence because of wars etc in the country doesn't mean the evidence isn't there, just that it hasn't been found YET. Bit like how Aboriginal Australians were claimed to have arrived in Australia around 12,000 years ago, then 16,000, then 20,000, then 30,000, then it stuck at 40,000 for a long time, then it moved up to 60,000, now archaeological evidence says up to 85,000 years ago, but pollen & ash samples still say 120,000-130,000 years ago, so just because there's not yet archaeological evidence proving that, doesn't mean it's not true, just that there's not YET the evidence to support it, but everything suggests that enough searching WILL confirm that, so why shouldn't Aboriginal people claim that? Why shouldn't Vietnamese claim what they believe to be true & what best evidence suggests is true, just because invasions of their land means they've not YET been able to find the "proof" of it. Best evidence says silk was there along with China
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  60. Polyester is the main cause of the great pacific garbage patch. It is responsible for more microplastics in the oceans than any other type of plastic on the planet!
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