They are getting BIGGER!

My cats that is! I've been watching these little buggers for a while now. I've been going out 2 times a day looking and counting them to see how many more I can find. I started off with only finding 4 baby ones. Now I have counted 15 at least! These here are the biggest ones so far.
Now I have a question, How can I be SURE and see the whole procedure? I want to be sure and see the whole thing. You know the cocoon and the whole nine yards. I feel like since I have chosen to let these hungery cats eat away at my pretty butterfly weed, I must see the rest of the game to make it worth my while. Is there anyway I could bring a couple in the house maybe in a old fish tank? Has anyone ever done this before that can help me?? If so how do I set up for them?
How do I keep the green plants alive for them to eat?
Help!!! I want to see it all the way thru!

wow those sure did grow!!!! don't have any answers for you though :(

I sure was hoping that someone had done this before, and could tell me how to go about it.
You're right Susan, they are growing and fast! That is why I feel like it wont be long til they do their cocoons!

Molly, I would think if you took a fish tank that has a screen on top, put some dirt in it and plant a couple of flowers in it so they have food, it may just work. You would have to pick a plant they're eating outside though so you'd have to watch them eat it to know it's the right one but I'm sure you probably already know. So that's what I would do :)
Maybe even put it close to a window so they have light or put the tank outside during the day where it can be ventilated but not too hot or the whole thing will steam up :(
Once they're a cocoon, for the butterfly to have food once it emerges, you just stick a piece of a sponge in a shallow small lid or something that is rather flat but can hold a bit of liquid. Then I think the same mixture of sugar to water as hummingbird nectar? should work. Not sure on it. That's the best I can come up with :)

Thanks Susan! I think I might try this. It can't hurt to try huh? I am determined to see this no matter if I have to set up camp out in the garden LOL
Thanks for the help, sounds like a good idea to me!

Mollybee,

Two years ago my daughter brought in a cat that was eating her parsley plants. She put it in a jar with several big pieces of parsley and a bottle cap of water (holes in the top of the jar) on an east facing windowsill. She gave it fresh parsley every day. Also, she put a stick in there, for him to cocoon on.

He cocooned on the parsley instead (silly cat) and we had to attach the piece of parsley to the stick, to keep the cocoon from ending up on the bottom.

When he broke out, she just took the jar outside and let him climb out onto her hand. Once the wings were dry, off he flew!

It was very cool, and she enjoyed the experience. I was at work when he 'broke out' so I missed that part.

Cheri'

Cheri
What a wonderful experience that must have been for her.
Do you know how long it took to get him to the cocoon stage? How long did she have to feed it? As you can see some of my cats are a little fatter than a pencil is round. How big do they get before the start the cocoon?
I am so excited about doing this! can ya tell? LOL

Actually just about 1 hour ago my son came in and had found one of my biggest cats out in the yard on a old cookie tin container. It was about 15' away from the host plant so I started wondering if it was big enough and was leaving to find its spot to cocoon.
I took it back to the host plant and he really didn't want to get back on there but he did. He was only on there a second or two when he started munching away on the leaves. So now I think, was he out hunting a cocoon spot or was he hunting more food?
Anyway Thanks for the info, It has really helped.

MB, type into your address bar "butterflies", and you will find a world of info for all types of butterfly culture as well as collecting. I'm not sure which one it will be, but the University of Texas has a huge sanctuary for birds and butterflies and at one time they had a lot of information on the web. And there are many others, so you can get it from all levels.

As I remember, she only fed it for a week to 10 days before it cocooned. The one she had didn't look like yours at all, I remember that it was a bright green cat with spots down the side and turned out to be some kind of swallowtail, a black one, I think. (she ended up doing all kinds of research on it)

It was big and fat when she brought it in. Yours look pretty big, too.

Maybe because he didn't have anyplace to go, but her's just kept on eating until he started cocooning. Attached himself to the parsley stem he had been munching on ...

Sorry I don't know more. Wish she was here, she could tell you more than you want to know. LOL

Cheri'

I went out there againand I tell ya I thought I had a fewbut there are tonsof them!!! I mean really!! I lost count several times. I actually have 2 large butterfly weed plants that are about 4'tall and then I have some that for some reason didn't grow much higher than 20-25"tall. The small plants haven't bloomed and I had even thought that they might not even be the same kind of plant. But in looking just now I saw that the cats have found it too! There were about 9 on this little patch of plants, and uncountable ones on the other plants! I kinda feel as if I am being envaded with them! really!!!
Guess I will get a tank set up for some tomorrow. Since I don't have parsley I will have to just feed them leaves off the butterfly weed.
Wish me luck!
Thank you both for the info and help.

definitely feed them what they were eating before. Different cats eat different plants, and will starve if they don't have the certain plants they need. (I learned that much from DD)

I'd put small branches of the bush in the aquarium so they can crawl around on 'em just like outside. They might not know what to do with just leaves ... =)

Good luck!

Cheri'

Yea I think I will because as the plants are looking now, they even eat the stems!

Thanks!

Caterpillars will often wander pretty far from the host plant in search of the perfect place to climb up, attach to, and become a chrysalis. It actually does that by splitting it's skin. The one your son found was done eating.

If you want to raise some you can use an aquarium or similar with a screen top. I would keep it inside the house, that way you know they won't be cooked in the sun. You can use a small plastic glad container with oasis to keep the milk weed upright. Poke holes in the top. You have to have a top or the cats will fall in and drown. It's a good idea to keep a paper towel on top of the container. Big cats makes big messes, so that makes it easier to clean up after them.

Make sure to have some good sticks for them to crawl up on with space below for them to strech out their wings properly. It takes quite a while for the wings to unfold and fill with fluid.

Your cats in the photo look pretty big, I wouldn't think you have to feed them for too many days. Hopefully you will keep track of when they hatch so that you can let them out as soon as their wings dry. They need to get to flowers to feed.

Monarchs only eat Milkweed, so that's the only thing you can feed them.

Good luck,
Kris

Thank you Kris.
This is really helpful. I am going to get a thing set up today for them to use.

MollyBee, I made what I dubbed a butterfly hatchery so I could bring cats in the house to complete raising them and watch them hatch. It's really neat to watch them transform. I let them outside when the butterflies hatch. I put the larval plants in a vase or immerse the stems in water so they stay alive. I started a thread on how I made the hatchery somewhere on DG...I'll have to go hunt it down. Here's a picture of it:

that's a pretty cool thing you made there ;)

MollyBee, I'm waiting for pictures here.........LOL

Here's a link to the post on making the b'fly hatchery: http://davesgarden.com/t/369259/

That is tooo cool ButterflyGardnr!! I like that alot!!
Maybe I can do that this weekend, as I have already got about 6 in a old 10gal fish tank with screen wire on top to keep them in.
I put several sticks for them to use and several seedpods off the host plant(which I saw them eatting) Plus lots of the stalks in which they were already eatting the leaves from.
Then I have been misting them with a spray bottle to keep the leaves kinda wet. So far everyone seems to be happy.
Guess I will know more in the morning.
I'm really thinking of taking a couple of them back out there. The kids kept wanting to put more and more in there, but I was only wanting to put a couple at a time. Might better slip some back out there and put them back once the kids are gone to school in the a/m.
Will post pics in the a/m

Thanks for the useful idea!! I love it!!!

Glad you like it, MB. I forgot to mention that I put sticks in the hatchery for the caterpillars to climb up on, too. Sometimes they will go into chrysalis on the sticks, but more likely they will climb to the top of the hatchery.

Your story brings back memories... Raising cats is great fun for kids. They get to watch this miraculous transformation. My brothers and I caught caterpillars as kids and raised them in the house. We'd go out everyday and get fresh food and clean out the jars they were in. I still can't believe my mom ever agreed to that, but I'm glad she did. We'd wake up one morning and there would be a butterfly in the kitchen. Sometimes they would be flying around the house and we'd have to try to get them to sit on our fingers so we could take them outside. It was an experience that every kid should have.

Good luck in your endeavor. Can't wait to see the pix!