A Detailed Guide to Centipede Farming Methods and Processing Techniques

The centipede, also known as Tianlong or the hundred-footed worm, is a common traditional medicinal material, chiefly used to treat convulsions from fright and epilepsy, tetanus, swellings and snake bites.

I. Habits
Centipedes fear sunlight and hide by day, emerging at night. During the day they generally inhabit hillsides, fields, roadsides or places overgrown with weeds, and are especially fond of hiding in abandoned ditches, desolate grave mounds, cracks beside roads, and among stones and rubble. From Grain in Ear to the Summer Solstice, as temperatures gradually rise, centipedes prefer to live in dark, damp, warm, rain-sheltered places with circulating air. In late autumn they mostly dwell under loose-soil ditch slopes facing away from the wind and toward the sun, or inside tree hollows. When the temperature falls below l00℃ they stop feeding, and at minus 7℃ they enter hibernation. During hibernation centipedes no longer move or eat, their bodies form an “S” shape, their antennae curl from outside inward, and their tail legs draw together. The depth at which they overwinter and lie dormant is directly related to the height of the air and soil temperatures.
From egg hatching through larval development to adulthood, a centipede must undergo several molts. With each molt it grows noticeably larger. Adult centipedes molt once a year, and a few molt twice. During molting they must not be disturbed, otherwise the molting time is prolonged (generally it takes about 2 hours). At this time, attacks by swarms of ants must also be prevented, because a molting centipede has no ability to resist. Centipedes grow rather slowly: from the first year, when the egg hatches into a larva, it reaches only 3cm to 4cm by that year's hibernation; in the second year it can grow to 3.5cm to 6cm; only in the third year does it exceed 1Ocm. Therefore, from the egg developing and growing into an adult and then laying eggs again, a centipede needs 3 to 4 years.

II. Building Pools
For artificial centipede farming, jar culture or pool culture may be used. For jar culture, use a broken old earthen jar or ceramic jar with a narrowest diameter of more than 0.5m, bury it mouth-down in the soil to a depth of about 20cm, and inside the jar build up broken bricks or adobe in the middle, about 10cm lower than the jar rim, leaving a certain gap between the middle adobe stack and the jar wall. If a complete, unbroken jar is used, do not knock out the bottom; simply build up the adobe inside the jar. A jar 80cm in diameter can hold about 200 adult centipedes.
For pool culture, the breeding pool should be built in a sunny, ventilated place with good drainage that is rather damp and secluded; it may be built indoors or outdoors. Build it of bricks or stones, with a cement-rendered surface, 80cm high; the area of the breeding pool may be whatever is convenient, generally 5 sq m to 10 sq m. Spread fine gravel or broken tiles on the ground, and weeds and trees may also be planted in the pool to create as far as possible a natural ecological environment suited to centipede habitation. Around the inner walls of the pool, paste smooth, undamaged plastic film, or fit a ring of glass panes about 15cm wide around the pool rim at right angles to the pool wall as an inner ledge, to prevent centipedes from escaping and also to prevent harmful animals from falling into the pool. Generally, each square meter of breeding pool can hold about 500 to 900 adult centipedes.

III. Mating and Egg Laying
A centipede's lifespan is only 6 years. After reaching sexual maturity, they generally mate in the early morning of a clear day after rain from March to May and from July to August, and begin laying eggs 40 days later. Before laying eggs, the centipede's abdomen lies almost flat against the ground as it digs out a burrow. When laying, the centipede's body bends into an “S” shape, the rear several pairs of walking legs prop it up, the tail legs tilt upward, and the antennae stretch forward; then strings of eggs are discharged from the genital pore. The egg-laying process takes about 3 hours, with 80 to 150 eggs laid each time. The egg surface is covered with mucus, and the eggs stick to one another to form an egg mass. During incubation the female centipede neither eats nor drinks until the young centipedes hatch. When egg laying is finished, the centipede promptly and cleverly turns its body sideways, gathers the eggs into a ball with its walking legs, and holds them in its embrace to incubate; the incubation period is 43 to 50 days.
Centipede eggs are oval, vary in size, and are cream-colored and semi-transparent. The egg mass incubates rather slowly: for the first 5 days there is no noticeable change; after 10 days the eggs become long and flattened; after half a month the eggs become kidney-shaped with a split line in the middle; after 20 days they become crescent-shaped; after 1 month they begin to take on larval form and wriggle within the mother centipede's embrace; after 35 to 40 days the centipede larvae are already crawling up and down; after 43 to 45 days the larvae leave the mother's body, move about on their own, and seek food by themselves.

IV. Feeding Habits
Centipedes are carnivorous animals and like to eat small insects. Centipedes possess venom and can kill small animals larger than themselves. The small animals they eat include yellow mealworms, crickets, rice-colored worms, scarab beetles, termites, cicadas, dragonflies, spiders, flies, bees, and their eggs, pupae and larvae. They can also be fed some worms, earthworms, snails, and the meat, internal organs, blood and cartilage of various livestock, poultry and aquatic animals; they also eat fruit peels, potatoes, carrots, tender vegetables and the like, as well as milk and bread, but the food must be kept fresh.

V. Management
1. Maintain a quiet environment: Centipedes require a quiet environment for laying and incubating eggs; if disturbed, they often eat the eggs and larvae. Generally, within the same rearing pool, females lay eggs at different times. Females that have not yet laid often interfere with and disrupt the normal progress of egg laying and incubation, and some even snatch and eat the eggs. Therefore, before the females lay eggs, they should be reared separately, or isolated within the large rearing pool using glass panes, bottomless glass cups or tin cans.
2. Increase feeding before laying: During the incubation period centipedes do not eat or drink, relying on their own stored nutrients to sustain activity. Before laying eggs, females have the habit of eating heavily to store up nutrients, so at this time the amount of food should be increased, and attention should be paid to adjusting the variety of food, to encourage the females to eat more and increase their nutrition before incubation.
3. Management during incubation: While brooding eggs and rearing young, centipedes react to some degree to disturbance, vibration, strong light and loud noise. Therefore the rearing room must be chosen as a quiet, dark place. It is best to install red light bulbs indoors and screen the windows with cloth or bamboo blinds to prevent strong light from shining in. The incubation jars in the room should be put in place beforehand, and once eggs are laid, they should not be moved easily. Do not casually move the covering glass pane (the press piece), and do not shine a flashlight on them. If the humidity in the incubation nest is too low, it will affect the normal development of the embryos, so water should be added to the incubation jar at the proper time. When adding water, pour it slowly down along the jar wall so that the inner wall around the incubation nest is only slightly damp. After incubation ends, because centipedes compete for food and the large ones eat the small ones, the females should be removed promptly or the larvae reared in separate compartments.
4. Pay attention to rearing density: The changes in body length and body size of the centipedes must be observed so that they can be divided into groups and reared in separate pools. At the same time, centipedes must be prevented from escaping.
In addition, the feed must be kept clean and hygienic; in particular, bait contaminated with pesticides must absolutely not be fed. Observe frequently to prevent centipedes' natural enemies from entering the breeding pool, and promptly remove diseased centipedes.

VI. Processing Methods
Medicinal centipedes consist of the dried whole body. After capture, kill them by scalding in boiling water, then insert thin bamboo skewers sharpened at both ends through the head and tail, and use the spring of the bamboo strips to straighten them, then dry them in sunlight. After processing and preparation, the centipede is flat and elongated, 14cm to 16cm long, 0.6cm to l.Ocm wide, with 22 segments in all.