Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: FinallyStanding room only at the "cat house"!, 1 by kingedking

kingedking wrote:
After my first children (BSTs), it was a long dry spell and I thought things were over for the year and then a bunch (is there a word for a bunch of butterflies? like covey, pride, herd???) showed up. I had 42 Monarch cats in the cathouse. This pic is from two days ago and by this afternoon I had 7 crysalis hanging around. I was rapidly running out of milkweed but I got lucky and one of the local nurseries had some in one gallon containers. Nice healthy looking plants so I bought the nine plants they had on hand. And yes, it was the most expensive nursery around, but the babies had to have food. And what do I find on one of the new plants?? Two Queen cats about 3/4 of an inch long, and more eggs. Three more have hatched since then. Can I mix the queens in with the Monarchs or should I keep them by themselves??

I have not been posting much, but I have been reading all the words of wisdom in this forum since day one. Thanks to all who have posted. After reading everything, I feel like I at least halfway know what I'm doing. One more question--with 42 cats, how many butterflies will I end up with? Is there a "survival rate", like 95%, or 80%, or even better 100%?? Ed