I abandoned my house for worms, and I have no regret at all

This picture shows how cocoons is placed into a mortgages .PHOTO KIBATA KIHU/STANDARD.

Other daily chores for a silkworm farmer include ensuring the breeding area is clean so as to minimise the spread of viral diseases and ensure highest quality cocoon is produced at the end of the season.

“This is ensured through daily replacement of feeding material and breeding base which is composed of newspapers. To replace the old leaves, the worms are attracted to claw to a few fresh leaves then transferred to fresh trays,” he says.

He adds: “They also need sensitive care. For example, when the worms are found on top of the leaves, no feeding or replacement happens because they are moulting (or sleeping) and shedding old skin.

Optimum care and hygienic breeding ground including a cemented floor ensures the best quality cocoon for a premium price is produced. Top quality demands that the cocoons be stain free.

After 28 days, the worms are transferred into the cocooning area; wooden montages with spaces of about two by two inches per worm.

“Silk yarn comes from saliva and the transfer of worms to the montage boards allows them to  shed old skin with ease,” says Mutugi adding, “It also allows for production of the right size of cocoon in about seven days.”

The major objectives of silkworm breeding he says are improving the egg-laying capacity of a breed, the health of larvae, quantity of cocoon and silk production, disease resistance, etc.

“Healthy larvae lead to a healthy cocoon crop. Health is dependent on factors such as fewer dead larvae in the montage, shorter larval duration (the shorter the larval duration, the lesser the chances of infection) and bluish tinged fifth instar larvae (it is observed that bluish colored fifth instar larvae are healthier than the reddish brown ones),” Mutugi says.

Quantity of cocoon and silk produced are directly related to the pupation rate and larval weight. Healthier larvae have greater pupation rates and cocoon weights. Quality of cocoon and silk depends on a number of factors including genetics.

One cocoon will naturally produce a yarn of between 500 and 1,000 metres.

Mutugi’s vision is that his company Seritex Company will roll out local value addition of the cocoons through reeling to extract thread and moth which can be used to make human and animal feed.

Currently, a kilo of top quality dry cocoons in the local market fetches Sh1,000 while in the international market it could fetch double.

Tuinuane Group already has an order to supply a Japanese Company while another company from the United Kingdom has also expressed interest if they are able to generate enough production.

In their pilot phase where they grew 40,000 worms, they produced 40 kilogrammes of dry worms and are now looking forward to produce over 150 kilogrammes.

“This business is only being let down by high production costs because unavailability of mulberry leaves mean they will cost Sh20 per kilogramme,”he observes.

He, however, says that the international market is very large with the current trend to go green; silk yarn is now being used to manufacture medical devices; high end wigs and hardened to substitute metal.

High demand

“What we are lacking is capacity, the demand is there,” says Mutugi who got into this farming after an interaction with an Indian friend about alternative to crop farming practiced in South Imenti.

He adds that most small scale farmers can cultivate between 20,000 and 40,000 worms on structures of 25 by 15 feet and quarter acre mulberry plantations.

Large scale farms could have between 100,000 to one million worms. He is looking at going large scale and has already put 10 acres of land at Makandune in Central Imenti and another four acres in Timau under mulberry.

Mutugi has never been employed since he completed his MBA (Business Management) at Mount Kenya University and he is elated that his idea has been shortlisted to compete for Africa Entrepreneurship Award 2015 and qualified to complete in round two.

Ever since he sold his idea to Tuinuane Group which has 15 members, Mutugi believes he can convince many other farmers to venture into worm growing and cites Timau area where he says mulberry cultivation could give locals their first cash crop.

He estimates an investment of Sh1 million on a farm of 160,000 worms. “I can only look ahead in this business. Not backwards,” he concludes.

A timber walled, corrugated iron sheet roofed two-room house with a cement floor at Nkando village, Imenti South used to be Timothy Mutugi’s house until he abandoned it two years ago.

Today, worms live in the house courtesy of Tuinuane Youth Group, which is seeking to mint money from the insects.

Mutugi, an MBA graduate, chairs the youth group which is in a second phase of a project to roll-out silkworm farming with a vision of reviving the textile industry in the area which collapsed with the Gaitu Cotton Ginnery in lower Imenti around the time of his birth 30 years ago.

In Mutugi’s former abode, the youth group is rearing 40,000 silk worms acquired at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) in Nairobi.

He says after an intensive care of 28 days, the larvae goes into pupae stage which is crucial stage for cocooning.

It is at this stage of the life cycle where the group can literally start counting its chicks because silk thread is generated here.

Nkando is a cold area and some of the improvements the group have had to make on Mutugi’s former house include fortifying the wooden walls with partitioning board to maintain ideal temperatures of 24-28 degrees centigrade for the worms to thrive.

The worms grow up in the inner compartment made of wooden beds three feet above the cement floor with a partitioning board base.

They are fed daily on fresh mulberry leaves which requires the labour of three.

“There is a shortage of mulberry leaves in the area and the workers have to walk far and wide to source the leaves because many farmers have not heeded our advice to plant the crop,” says Mutugi.

Aggressive feeders

According to him, successful investment in silk worm farming requires sufficient plantations of mulberry which is the sole food of the insects unless one is cultivating Eri Silkworms; a Genetically Modified (GMO) breed - which can feed on local cassava and castor oil leaves.

To cultivate 40,000 worms for example, one needs a full mature crop of a quarter acre (or 1,000 trees) of mulberry.

The plant grows well in highland areas with sufficient rainfall and can also be comfortably grown under irrigation.

“They are aggressive feeders and at the end of the period will have consumed one tonne (1,000 kilos) of leaves,” says Mutugi.