It's Butterfly time at my house

As long as I can remember our family has enjoyed watching the many stages of the Monarch butterfly. So we have always gone outside in early to late July to turn over milkweed leaves and look for the Monarch eggs.

We carefully snap off these leaves and place them (no more than four at a time) into an abandoned fish tank with a cover. We add fresh, non-egg holding leaves every day or so, when the caterpillars hatch.

In about ten days to two weeks the caterpillars are large and fat enough to crawl up to the cover of the fish tank and curl up into a 'j' shape. About 24 hours after they 'j', they burst into cocoon.

Right now we have two cocoons, one in a 'j' and the other muching away.

Here is a photo from last year's brood:

That is awesome!

Oh what a neat thing to do with the kids, they must love it. My milkweed is struggling this year, just little stubs right now. Hope to see some monarchs here soon.

Cool, Candyce. Show us more.
Andy P

Dear Candyce,
Keep up the good work! I am working on a butterfly garden at our local DCR reservation and have had fun learning about this type of gardening. I was there yesterday and we have had butterlies coming through! It seems to be a good year around here for many sorts of butterlies.
Our garden is going to be beautiful as well as butterfly friendly.
Martha

great story... have fun!

Why I have never tried this is beyond me.....I have a very large field of milkweeds......they would never go hungry!!

Yesterday I saw the most amazing butterfly at the pink coneflower - alas no camera. It was a like a monarch - but bigger.

Very cool Candyce. To be picky though, for butterflies it's a chrysalis.

Victor - leave it to you! LOL Yeah I know it's 'chrysalis', but at the time I couldn't think of the word, much less spell it. (senior moment, don't you know)

I did this with my own kids when they were growing up and now my kids do it with their kids. I'll try to take some photos later today of the 'progress'.

Did you know that Monarchs seem to come back to the same spot the following year? So we try to release ours in the same field every year.

That is great. I have to get Milkweed so I can do it with my boys. Make sure to get photos of the 'coming out party'!

It was my goal to be there this year when the caterpillars went into the 'chrysalis' stage. But they can hang upside down in the 'j' shape for 12 to 24 hours before the chrysalis appears. Only once have I actually caught one creating the chrysalis from start to finish. Man! It's fast! I sat there absolutely mezmorized by the whole process. But didn't get any photos.

This year - more photos - I hope.

It would be great to get that in a time-lapse series.

Here's my attempt to do some photographing of the process. This first photo is of the fish tank in which we keep the caterpillars while they gorge themselves on milkweed leaves ...

... and here's three of the four in their chrysalises ... and one creating his 'sticky spot' to attach himself (or herself) to the top of the tank so that he can hang upside down.

And a close-up of the one creating his 'sticky spot'. Can you see the white-ish dot near the tail end? That's how he will attach himself to the top of the tank.

These photos were all taken this morning. As there are changes, I will update, if you are all interested.

Wow - great shots! Keep them coming.

Oh Yes! We are interested and inspired!!

Looks good Candy. We have had a butterfly farm here too this year. I think my wife is going to tag some this fall.

Victor - The milkweed is easier to seed than transplant. They do like butterfly weed also.

I have Asclepias.

Candyce, You appear much younger than I had imagined ;^)

Very funny, Dave. But thanks for the compliment. That's my granddaughter, Taelar. She's #5 out of seven and one-thirds grandchildren. Perhaps I will post a photo of myself sometime though. Who knows?

She is very cute! Congratulations on all 8!!

Oh, she KNOWS she's cute! That photo was taken last year on her 5th birthday, (Aug 13). We had two butterflies hatch that day.

We have some milkweed near the butterfly garden that looks munched. I will check it out for eggs when I go back over tomorrow.
Martha

A friend dropped by today. He commented on the milkweed "You got some weeding to do." lol.
I just noticed yesterday that the wild Milkweed flowers come in white and pink. I have the pink.
Andy P

Candyce - that is an awesome thing to do with the kids!! Here is a pic of a butterfly I was watching today. Is it a monarch or a viceroy? Eleanor

Here is another view. Eleanor

And another view. Eleanor

seems like a lot of fun Candyce..... great shots too

I am surprised at how much interest this has created! So .... (drum roll, please) ...

Ta da!!!

The making of a chrysalis!

First of all the caterpillar gets in his (her) 'j' shape ...

He will hang this way for anywhere from 18 to 24 hours, so if you want to watch the chrysalis process, you REALLY have to note the time, and then be there in 18 hours!

At 12:50 PM today, we noticed that the caterpillar was getting 'greener' and fatter. This is not easy to spot unless you are looking for it. When the caterpillar looks a bit more darker green and perhaps just a bit more plump, he's ready to chrysalis ...

All of a sudden, the caterpillar will seem to split his skin from the back, and from the bottom up ....

I didn't get a very good shot of the back of the caterpillar for two reasons:
(1) the lid of the fish tank was in the way of getting a good shot, and
(2) the kids were right at my elbow

This shot is not very clear, but you can see that the chrysalis is beginning to form from the bottom up. It is actually just like a shedding of the skin on a snake. Here the chrysalis is halway there.

When the entire skin has been shed, you'll notice the 'black stuff' near the top of the caterpillar. This is the old skin that made him look like a caterpillar - the black and green stripes on the greenish-white skin. The feet and the antennae are also in this black mess of old skin.

After all of the skin has been shed the caterpillar twists and turns, rather violently in my opinion, until the old skin just falls off.

The whole process from start to finish takes about seven minutes.

Done!

Now we wait for about ten days to two weeks to launch our butterflies!

Saw this thread about butterflies noted on my opening page and had to chime in and say
what a great idea to plant nectar and host plants for the monarchs. And what interesting pics of your chrysalis development and great pic of your little grandchild! She's a cutie!

FYI We found a great site for monarch info, "Monarch Watch", mentioned on the Butterfly Forum. It explains how to attract Monarchs to your yard and how to grow milkweed. Teachers and homeschoolers (and even plain folks) will find some good info here.

And it's not so difficult and it turns out for us it's a lot of fun to 'host' the butterflies.

Here's the "Monarch Watch" site link:

http://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/seed_kit.html

and here's a link to the Butterfly Forum's Sticky Thread with all kinds of good details about Butterfly gardening and raising cats.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/744103/

I just used some of this information last week to entertain my little nieces visiting from Cooperstown. They loved all the butterfly watching and so did I. And they learned a lot and they thought I was brilliant!! Ha, ha.

Have fun with your cats! And butterflies!

Great shots Candyce - thanks for the mini-series! And thank you tabasco for the info and the link.

Ditto what Victor said! Great stuff.

One thing I don't have to do is attract the butterflies! There's enough milkweed around here for everyone. And it's a weed, so we are always pulling it out of the gardens. We let it stay on the back hill and in the little area across the street, though.

When they go to seed, I'd be willing to send anyone who wants them milkweed seeds.