Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: DAILY PICTURES #105, 1 by lepfarmer

lepfarmer wrote:
A butterfly shot of some Zebra Longwings roosting in my covered and heated flight cage. Even with the heaters it's been rather cool in there during the ice storm, but that will change today as the sun has finally returned!

Something to remember to those of you that are thinking of building cages for raising caterpillars. It's important to be able to sterilize the cages (preferably after each batch of larvae). Otherwise you'll have diseases building up - viral, bacterial and protozoans like OE. Before the collapsable cages came on the market, I had wooden cages with screening with open tops and bottoms. I used cookie sheets for the tops and bottoms. They were a pain to sterilize -- needed a big tank to fill with bleach water to dunk them in. The collapsable cages my seem a bit expensive, but they are sooo easy to sterilize in a sink of 10% bleach solution.

Dale Clark
Dallas County Lepidopterists' Society
http://www.dallasbutterflies.com