Can Box Turtles Eat Silkworms?

Can a Box Turtle Eat Silkworms?

Yes — silkworms are one of the better feeders you can offer a box turtle, and they can be a regular part of the diet rather than a treat.

Silkworms (Bombyx mori) are one of the few feeders that are genuinely good rather than merely convenient: roughly 64% protein and only 10% fat by dry weight, over 80% moisture, and a calcium-to-phosphorus ratio of about 1:1. Most feeder insects are badly inverted on that last one and need dusting to correct it. Silkworms mostly do not.

They are also soft-bodied and highly digestible, which matters for a young animal, a recovering one, or anything that struggles with hard-shelled prey.

How Many, and How Often

3–5 silkworms twice a week as the protein part of a mixed plate.

Why Silkworms Suit a Box Turtle

Box turtles are long-lived and calcium is the nutrient that decides how that long life goes. A feeder at roughly 1:1 calcium to phosphorus does more for a turtle's shell than a dusted cricket does.

What Else to Feed

Silkworms are excellent but they have no real exoskeleton, and a diet of nothing but soft prey leaves the gut underworked. Run them alongside a varied omnivore diet with discoid roaches rather than instead of them.

One Thing That Kills More Silkworms Than Anything Else

Never refrigerate them. Cold is the single most common cause of a whole cup dying at once. Silkworms are not crickets or waxworms — they want room temperature, and putting them in the fridge to "keep them fresh" is what kills them.

More detail in the complete silkworm raising and care guide.