Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Spanish Moth Caterpillars and Forest Tent Caterpillars, 0 by UniQueTreasures

UniQueTreasures wrote:
Hubby brought home some caterpillars from a 4 wheeling excursion today. About a half a dozen each of Spanish Moth Caterpillars and Forest Tent Caterpillars. The FTC's look very familiar to me. I am sure that I've seen hundreds of those in one of my trees every year. The Spanish Moth Cats are black and white beauties.

He said there were hundreds of each of these. There was a field with standing water and the "grass" there was at least a foot tall. He plucked a few leaves and put the dozen cats with the leaves into a soda bottle. I've transferred them to a Tupperware container for the night because it's suppose to get to 37 in the morning here. I will put them in the big cage tomorrow.

My dilema is that I don't have a clue what to feed these rascals. I hope someone here will know and that I will have it on hand in the yard or be able to find it.

The Spanish Moth Cats are pretty good size and could go to their chrysalis stage soon. They are much bigger than what it looks like the moths will be. I used BUGGUIDE to ID them. Unfortunately, they don't have much in the way of info about them.

Here are photos saved from Bugguide of the cats and what they will grow up to be. My camera card has been borrowed at the moment or I'd have taken the photos myself.

Janet