2nd instars writhing, probably dying, WHY?

[love-bug98]

Can anyone give me a clue to why my 6 day old cats are both suddenly flipping all around and I think one is dead already. They were fine this afternoon and both molted early this morning. About 3 hours ago they both started rolling around as if in pain and I have never witnessed this before. I have been raising monarchs for 4 years. These I had from eggs and hatched them indoors. Any opinions/advice would be greatly appreciated!

[harpo787]

Well, you've been doing this longer than I have, that's for sure (less than a year here). I'm sure you know how to eliminate common problem areas. The only thing that came to mind for me was the food they're eating.

Could it be that plants have become toxic (to the cats I mean, obviously)? How new are they? Where were they obtained? Is it possible the nursery/store you obtained them from used some sort of systemic pesticide on the plant? Is it possible you, or a family member, or lawn maintenance crew used some sort of pesticide?

Another thought just hit...how are the temperatures? Perhaps they are overheated and are dying from it?

While I'm here...I've got 5 (#6 is either hiding or dead) cats that have hit I believe the 5th instar, and they're huge, but they've eaten VERY LITTLE. I don't think a one of them has consumed an entire leaf. A handful of leaves have a bit of chewing on them, and it seems that whenever I check on them, one or two are eating, and the rest are just motionless.

I wonder if I am a victim of toxic plants myself...but I don't see them reacting negatively. They don't seem to be doing much at all! I did get the plants from Home Depot, but there is a third plant that's from a nursery that didn't use pesticide for certain (the aphids who came along with the plant guaranteed that!). Perhaps 2 cats to a plant just aren't going to do much "damage" to the plants?

Meanwhile over at mom's, she had easily 15-20 cats on two different plants each, and they have RAVAGED the poor plants. I ask about my situation because I'm about to go to her home tomorrow and remove some of them so that they don't destroy the rest of the plants completely (probably take 5-10 myself).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[love-bug98]

Thanks for your reply! As for your cats, mine have always stopped eating prior to climbing to the top of the cage and hanging. I hope this is the case with yours. I have obtained my milkweed in the same spot (side of the road) for four years and have never had a problem with it, although I suppose it is possible. They are both dead this morning, sigh.

[dzyg]

Sorry to hear you lost your cats! I would say it sounds like pesticide too, could they have sprayed the ditches in the area you get them from? Hopefully you can find some more, maybe next time washing the leaves would help? Not sure about that but I have heard others say you should rinse the leaves off before putting them in your containers. The leaves I get are only from my yard so I never have done that but I do make sure they are bug free. I did have one newly hatched caterpillar die this year, not sure what happened. He hatched fine, ate the egg casing but then just crawled away a bit and died on the leaf.

I have been doing this now for about four years also, each year I raise more and more. Dh wants to hit 125 this year but I think we will greatly surpass that amount being we already have 95 cats in the house and lots of eggs and cats still on my plants outside. This week I am having my dd's Brownie troop over and showing them the milkweeds, eggs and cats. I did a talk/presentation to them on the Monarchs a couple of months back.

[harpo787]

love bug: sorry to hear of the dying cats!

dzyg: very cool thing to enlighten the youngins early to take care of nature!

An update on my situation: one plant looks absolutely pathetic. It got eaten partially and is now looking horrid, and I don't think it's because of the eating. A couple of photos are enclosed below. Both milkweed plants (the other does not look the same as the photo, it appears fine) have been abandoned, and no cats remain. I've managed to spot 3 (2 somewhere on the cage, and one hanging on the pot's rim. Hopefully they've gone to pupate, I guess I'll see soon enough.






Unfortunately, I think that this plant's got some sort of systemic problem. As mentioned earlier (in this thread?) I've been to mom's and obtained 7 more, but now I'm short one plant. Thankfully I went and bought two more milkweeds before stopping at mom's...but they're young and surely won't last with 3 cats on each. One of them is an all yellow milkweed flower.

[dzyg]

harpo, sorry your milkweed is having problems. What kind of milkweed is that? The only kind I have around my house is the common milkweed which has much wider leaves. I have seen swamp milkweed around a pond in our area too last summer. I wouldn't have known it was milkweed except that there were cats all over it. LOL! Hope your new plants thrive now!

Oh yeah and last evening I was cleaning and adding more leaves to my containers. I have been actually cutting a whole plant down to do this and at the top of the plant I found a small spiders web that had two tiny cats caught up in it and dead. I have a feeling that I normally don't find this many cats this early because they are mostly killed by others bugs and spiders on the milkweeds. I also found an egg on that plant which has hatched a caterpillar this morning. Luckily it is safe from that spider, however that spider is gone now.

I want to go out and collect more eggs and cats (am I insane??) but I am waiting until after the Brownie troop comes over tomorrow. I actually talked to my daughters first grade class about Monarchs too and brought in an egg and then when it hatched a caterpillar.