Where Do You Keep Your Eggs And Baby Caterpillars?

[Gwynne]

I was wondering what type of containers people who rear their monarchs indoors use for the eggs and the baby caterpillars. The caterpillars I found and wrote about previously were fourth or fifth instars. I have some eggs now and baby caterpillars. Donna has recommended putting the eggs in ziplock bags with moist paper towels to keep the leaves from drying out. This is what I am doing now, however due to space limitation, it isnt practical for me. I was wondering what other methods people use?

I do see this question has been asked before and I do apologize for asking again, but I am specifically asking about the eggs and caterpillars. A couple of you answered that you keep them in boxes. Do the boxes have lids or not? I was thinking of using boxes from the dollar store, but dont know how any air would get through.

[Butterfly Scaping]

For our cats, we use shoe box size containers that I buy from the dollar store. I cut a big hole in the top of the lid, cover the container with tulle (wedding vail material) then place the lid with the hole back on the container. The cats can't crawl out, they have plenty of air and I can mist the pupae once they pupate. I find this easy to clean the frass regularly and change out the milkweed leaves.

I am sure there are plenty of ways it can be done! Hope this helps.

Ron
Butterfly Scaping
Waystation #635

[Pat]

We've used the plastic dollar-store shoeboxes for many years, with rows of holes drilled across the lid with the smallest drill in the set (1/16 or 1/32, I forget which).

I keep an extra box to rotate the cats into. Paper towel liner on the bottom, insert fresh leaves, transfer cats from a messy box to the clean one. Toss away the messy box's paper towel, give it a clean towel and fresh leaves, and go on to the next messy box. At the end, the last box emptied gets cleaned up and becomes tomorrow's starter box. When the cats are little, they don't need to change boxes every day, but toward the end, those big guys are eating and excreting like mad! The best year we ever had at caterpillar-raising, we had 10 boxes with various sizes of caterpillars going at once. My son built a holding rack out of K'Nex to stack the boxes neatly and they didn't take up much room on the patio at all.

[Butterfly Scaping]

I keep an extra box to rotate the cats into. Paper towel liner on the bottom, insert fresh leaves, transfer cats from a messy box to the clean one. Toss away the messy box's paper towel, give it a clean towel and fresh leaves, and go on to the next messy box. At the end, the last box emptied gets cleaned up and becomes tomorrow's starter box.

OH! Nice idea. That starts for me ASAP! Thanks for sharing.

[Gwynne]

Thanks for the good ideas. I can see how the caterpillars would get air. How big do they have to be before you can change their leaves? I got the impression you didnt want to touch the very young ones. I do have them in zip lock bags now. I have some that are two days and some that are one day old. I dont want to move them off their leaves, but they are hanging out in their own waste and that cant be healthy! I did replace some of the paper towels yesterday.

[Gwynne]

Actually, I should soon have my aquarium available. It is light weight and has a mesh top. I found it at the goodwill store for 1.00. The only problem is the lid slides off as opposed to being able to lift it off. Someone decided to form their chrysalis right on the edge so I can not move the lid at all.

Pat, I can not picture twelve caterpillars of any size in those shoe box containers! I would be afraid they would eat each other! I am going to buy some tomorrow and drill some holes in them.