Raising Butterflies

In late summer, if you look among the milkweed plants, you might be lucky enough to find a young striped caterpillar. The telltale signs are many chewed up leaves and lots of caterpillar waste. You will only find this type of caterpillar on milkweed plants. It is the preferred food, as it is a monarch butterfly caterpillar. They are easy to raise at home as long as you have a place to keep them safe and a good supply of fresh milkweed leaves to feed them. We placed ours in an old plastic peanut container with holes punched in the lid. Then we packed it with milkweed leaves. Then next day, the leaves were mostly gone and there was an abundant amount of caterpillar waste to clean out.

After about a week of feeding the caterpillars nonstop, we were delighted to find they had made their magnificent chrysalis.  The gold dots just glittered in the sunlight.

After another wait of about 2 weeks, we were able to see through the chrysalis.  Can you see the butterfly forming inside? So cool!

 Our hope was to see the butterfly actually emerge, but we were not so lucky.  Once the chrysalis becomes see through, you know the butterfly will be coming out that day.  Here you can see the wings still crumpled and folded.  When the butterfly emerges, its abdomen is swollen and its wings are very crumpled.  The Monarch will actually pump up its wings with the fluid from its abdomen.  It is sort of like watching one of those blow up bounce houses inflate. 

The Monarch cannot move around very well yet.  It will have to finish pumping up its wings and dry off a bit before being able to fly.  We placed ours on a bunch of weeds high up and in a sunny place.  It still had not flown away by sundown.   In the early morning it was still where we had left it.  Later that afternoon, it was gone.

Here are some facts/opinions about Monarchs as dictated to me by my daughter;
1. Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed plants which makes them poisonous.
2. Caterpillars are fun to raise.  You get milkweed and you change it everyday so they have food to eat.  Have someone watch them while you clean out their cage.
3. When the caterpillars grow, they shed their skin and then eat it.
4. After they shed their skin 5 times, they turn into a pupa.  Monarch pupas are green with gold dots.
5. After 2 weeks they come out of the pupa as a butterfly.  It is all wet and has to dry its wings.
6. Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico in the fall.  Along the migration route butterflies lay their eggs.  The new butterflies will then continue the migration south.  Sometimes the great-great grandchildren will be the ones to complete the migration.