Cold hardy Monarch caterpillars

On my morning stroll through my garden today, I counted 5 fat, healthy Monarch caterpillars on my milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) plants. We had temperatures in the mid-20s F last week. These cats are big enough that I know they must have been around in a fairly good size prior to the freeze. I found the one pictured below within a day or so after the freeze. I hadn't noticed the others until this morning.

They have just about eaten up the milkweed plants on which they are feeding. Would it be a good idea (or not) to relocate them to milkweeds with more leaves?

Jeremy

You can bring one or two over to my triangle where I have two big clumps of parsley growing.
;)

You are welcome to several, Sidney. I can't afford to feed and house quintuplets, not even in caterpillars!

Jeremy

This message was edited Feb 22, 2006 11:04 AM

Jeremy,

You can move them to other milkweeds with more leaves or if you decide to raise them yourself make sure you have plenty of fresh milkweed leaves available.

At 20 degrees...I bet their little bodies are about frozen!!! I found some on my milkweeds when the weather got down to 40 degrees and the poor buggers could barely move. When I touched them and they were soooo COLD!!! I decided to bring them inside my warm house. They perked right up once the chill wore off and they started crawling all around their roomy cat-house...they also chowed down on lots of "room temperature" milkweed leaves.

Since I usually have gobs of monarchs and queen cats in my yard I didn't want to baby sit these so I released them back onto the milkweed plants when the cold front passed and the sun came back out to warm everything up.

~ Cat