FOR SALE, Cecropia Moth cocoons

Hyalophora cecropia --  Cecropia Moth cocoons for sale.  This is the largest insect in North America.

Price:  $8.00 per cocoon.  You can order less than 10 but please note offer below if you want to order 10 or more.  Please add $5.00 USPS shipping for your entire order, including any other species I am offering in my other ads (my other ads will all have the same posting date and no photo).   The email address in this ad is my PayPal email address.  Payment by check or money order is also possible for my regular customers.  U.S.A. orders only, please.  Please do not send money until I have confirmed your order. 

All of the cocoons in this offering have been weighed.  One third of the cocoons, the lightest ones in this batch of 337, have been removed and will not be sold.  The sale cocoons are therefore skewed in favor of females, but plenty of males will still be present, and none of them small.  Every order will have a mix of cocoons of varying weights to maximize the chance of both sexes being present.  However, I make no guarantees about the sex of the cocoons and I will not open cocoons to determine their gender.  These cocoons were reared from eggs obtained from reared females mated to wild Iowa males and the larvae were fed Wild Black Cherry leaves (Prunus serotina).  Cecropia larvae in this area tend to make almost exclusively the compact type of cocoon, but a very few cocoons of the “baggy” type are present.

Every increment of 10 cocoons purchased will include one of the heaviest cocoons, a cocoon that will certainly be a large female.  This cocoon will not be labeled or packaged separately, but will simply be included as one of the 10.  These heavyweight female cocoons, the heaviest 1% of the 337 cocoons, will only be available in this way.  Thus, a person purchasing 50 cocoons will automatically receive 5 of these heavyweight cocoons, mixed with 45 cocoons of mixed weights.

These cocoons are in diapause, so they can deal with whatever weather you will be having.  I recommend that you make a rodent-proof cage to protect the cocoons and place them immediately in an outdoor location, so they can develop in synchrony with any wild population in your area.  Just get some steel hardware cloth at your local hardware store.  Make a cylinder and fold over the ends perpendicular to each other, making it large enough for the emerging moths to expand their wings.  Hang the cage outdoors where it gets only natural light, but not direct sun.  Hang it out of reach of strong critters like raccoons, out of easy sight of birds, and where you can check on it easily.  Transfer the cocoons to a more suitable cage and bring indoors after the first moth emerges.  I will be offering eggs of this species off and on from mid-May through early June.  Release these moths only where they are native and only after dark or they will likely become bird food.