how to raise hornworms: first, you have to acquire some. i get mine from mulberry farms.

theyre fast and polite, and always have healthy stock. the worms come in cups of 20, with enough worm chow in them to get the worms to full growth, and ive never received fewer than 25 in a cup.

picture #1 i started weeding the bigger ones out when the cups started to get crowded, because i didnt want them to hog all the food. i made them a temporary home. i put a cardboard divider in, in hopes of making cleanup easier, and filled one side with plain, old potting soil with nothing in it, because my research online said they dig into the dirt to pupate. then i packed (not very well) some chow into a tupperware lid and put it sideways so they wouldnt be sitting and pooing in their food. the egg crates were just in case they wanted to hide.

picture #2 i probably wouldnt have needed that extra step if id had a box ready, but at the time i didnt know how i was going to house them for their transition. while they were in their temporary box, i made a flight box. it was a plain packing box, spray-painted white (completely unnecessary, but i wanted it to be pretty). i cut a door in the front

picture #3 and big, square holes in each side to be windows. i lined the entire inside of the box with clear contact paper to protect it from moisture, as the caterpillars do void everything out of their systems before they go into their pupae, and the eclosing (emerging) of the moths is also quite messy. i installed screen with the wonder known as duct tape, and made a little latch for the door:

picture #4 for my first batch of moths i used plain tree branches cut and anchored in a cat pan of soil:

picture #5 for the second batch i changed because the moths really didnt seem to want to lay their eggs on the tree branch. i switched to a bell pepper plant for the moths to lay their eggs on. they liked the peppers better, i think because it was a live plant. i didnt want to use tomatoes. i guess it wouldnt have mattered--the moths dont eat solids. peppers are also nightshade, so i planned to remove them as soon as the eggs hatched so the larvae wouldnt eat the leaves:

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i made a moth feeder out of a small styrofoam coffee cup with holes punched in the top. just when the moths were starting to emerge, i filled it with sugar water. the moths will eat for two days before they start to mate (and live about a week).

picture #7 i ran the strings up through the "ceiling:" i added a tiny reading lamp on a timer, to give them 14 hours of light and ten of darkness. a bigger lamp would have made the box too warm. the nightlight bulb painted black was to simulate moonlight; the females wont lay their eggs without it.

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for my second batch of moths, i switched to a hummingbird feeder, because i really didnt think they were getting sufficient food; i thought maybe something brightly colored would attract their attention. the plastic was too slippery for their feet, so i drizzled some hot glue on it so theyd have something to grip:

picture #10 the finished product:

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as my worms got nice and huge, i transferred them to their new home. i think theyre so pretty!

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when a hornworm is ready to make its pupa, it gets very restless and begins wandering, going around and around the container until it finds a place it wants to dig. the other thing youll notice is that when theyre ready, their dorsal vein becomes very obvious, and you can see it pulsating down the length of their backs. they will also void all liquid from their systems, so their prolegs (which arent real legs; they only have six real legs) draw in, and the whole worm gets looking kind of small and dried out:

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picture #15 then it finds a place to dig:

picture #16 i made an awful mistake with the first batch. if i was going to use dirt, i should have used it straight from outside, clay content and all, because that way the hornworm makes a little cell for itself in the clay, something it couldnt do in the loose potting soil. the worm to the left in the above picture died, because its pupa formed with dirt inside and it couldnt pupate properly. the second time i used plain, old paper towels:

picture #17 when the worms started wandering, i wrapped them loosely in paper towels and put each one in its own small container. with the first batch i did what id read online and put them all into a dark cupboard for four weeks. that turned out horrible, because a couple of moths eclosed while still confined to their containers and died that way. the second time i left the little containers gently sealed and checked them every day. when the pupa was ready i took it out and laid it on the paper towels, and the moths just eclosed when they were ready. fortunately, natures timing made them all come out within a few days of each other.

picture #18 this pupa is barely forming:

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this pupa is almost there:

picture #20 this one is complete. look at that tiny little curved handle-looking thing in the picture. that is where its proboscis will grow. isnt that amazing? and the little bulges where its new moth eyes will develop. i think its so beautiful:

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this is cool, because this is when you can tell if theyre males or females:

picture #22 now the most amazing thing happens. the creature changes completely; at one point in its transformation, the hornworm is neither worm nor moth. it dissolves into a liquid known as primordial soup. a liquid! how? when its time (which varies, as i learned the hard way) the moths came out. you cant help them, no matter how much you want to, because the struggle is vital to make them strong enough to survive:

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they leave their old pupae behind

picture #24 and begin their new lives. this ones wings havent unfurled yet. i gave it something to grasp so i could take its picture, then set it gently back down again:

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later:

picture #26 now theyre called, carolina sphinx moths. they eat for two days and mate. i never actually saw them eat, but i found little dribbles of sugar water on the screens where they liked to rest, so i guess they must have been. i met this guy online who showed me a video of him putting one on the edge of a glass and using a toothpick to gently unfurl its proboscis so it could drink. he told me if they ate more, theyd lay more eggs. Ive not tried it yet, but i did only have 141 eggs the first batch (fewer the second). there should have been more like six to eight hundred for my number of females. when they mate, they stay attached for about a day:

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even their eggs are beautiful:

picture #28 they only take a few days to hatch. i kept them at regular, comfortable-for-humans, room temperature. the first time, i put all the leaves with eggs into a rearing bin with some hornworm chow:

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i put quarter-inch screen on the bottomafter folding down all four edges to make it stand about an inch above the actual bottom of the binso the worms could be underneath and the worm chow could be on top:

picture #30 the second time i let the eggs stay in the flight box, and the babies for a few days after they hatched. i fed them tomato leaves, because the previous batch hadnt gone for the pepper leaves, so they went straight from egg to hornworm chow. they eat (and poop!) so much and grow so fast, i knew by the time they were big enough to feed, there wouldnt be anything poisonous in their systems. when they got a little bigger i switched them to worm chow, which they didnt appreciate one bit. they wanted their leaves. when i got the last of the leaves out, they resigned themselves to the hornworm chow and did fine with it.

these were my very first babies. using the screen as a measure, they were about 3/16ths of an inch long:

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this was one from the second batch. so tiny and perfect, right down to the teeny-tiny horn!

picture #32 they grow really fast:

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picture #35 almost all grown up:

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i did this! hornworms from eggs from moths from hornworms! how amazing!

good luck in your breeding endeavors, and if you learn anything new/better, please share it with me at tempestborn@yahoo.com. things to remember: hornworms from the garden are poisonous, because they feed on tomato plants and peppers, both of which are members of the nightshade family. baby hornworms are attracted to water, and theyll drown if they have any at all. even the hornworm chow cant be mushy. it also cant be dry, or their little mouths arent strong enough to eat it. theres an in-between thats fairly easy to find. i read that if theyre growing too fast, you can slow them down by having them spend every other day in the refrigerator. i would assume the crisper or door, since that doesnt get quite as cold. i havent tried it. my second batch of babies became mysteriously ill. they seemed to lose a lot of liquid and then die. i was afraid it was some kind of disease and i wrote to mulberry farms and asked, and they told me that was why they found it better to raise them in the cups, because as long as the food was right in their faces they wouldnt squabble (you can order the cups by themselves, complete with food, from mulberry farms). otherwise, theyll fight. i guess they got territorial over food, and when a hornworm gets injured, the wound wont close, so they just bleed out and die. i didnt have the problem with the first batch, so id have to say of the two, the first babies did better because i put their eggs directly under (see the screen in the bin) worm chow and it was all they ever knew to eat. i think maybe the second ones became problematic over the diet change. i dont know for sure, but when i try again ill put the babies on worm chow from the very beginning. things i havent figured out yet: can i put pupae in the refrigerator and keep them till i need them... what ive read says they can wait months to eclose if circumstances are inclement. and, can i put eggs in the refrigerator and keep those till i need them, the way you can with silkworms.

the worms i raised are tobacco hornworms. the tobacco hornworm has 7 diagonal stripes and a red horn, and its adult is the carolina sphinx moth. i think theyre prettier, but it could be mommy-bias:

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a tomato hornworm has 7 v-shaped markings along its sides and a bluish black horn. its adult is the five-spotted hawk moth:

picture #40 picture #39 both moths are also sometimes called hummingbird moths, probably because theyre so big. im sure most people dont care at all about the difference, but when my faith wavers, i think about these astonishing creatures.