Should i take every egg i see ?

[Orangeaid]

When are cats at the most risk in the wild.( Egg or small cat) and if they are much more vunerable in the egg form would it be beneficial to take every egg i see and release them back to the wild if i cannot rear them at my house do to the large amount iam already rearing. ? Thanks in advance Dave

[jen]

Hi Dave,
From what I've seen and learned, eggs are definiately the most vulnerable. I've watch some beauties sail into my yard ,lay eggs , ran over to take a look ( and to confirm that an egg had been laid). I then marked the leaf by tearing off the end, came back an hour later and it was gone! My milkweed does have many ants and other bugs that like to dine on monarch eggs. I believe the bigger they get the less vulnerable they are, I've found tiny hatchlings crawling around ( probably 2 days old) and most I've found were practically adults, ready to pupate within a day or two of bringing them in.Hope this helps....

[Orangeaid]

Thanks Jen. I figured that the egg stage would be the most vunerable and unless i hear that it would be bad iam going to start taking every egg i see and then at the very least return the small cats back to the wild milkweed if iam out of room .

[Gwynne]

I wanted to take all the eggs I saw, but soon became too overwhelmed. If you can handle it, go for it. I couldnt handle it. I also dont have my own source of milkweed, but have to walk or drive to get it.

I think the eggs are the most vulnerable. The other day I took 20 then realized that I couldnt take them all and had to leave the rest. Since then, I have not deliberately taken any more eggs, but I still end up with them when I am getting the bigger guys food. Then I try to raise them as I have removed them from their food source and they have absolutely no change for survival.

If it got to be too much for you, you could probably put the bigger caterpillars back. In my case, once I had raised them, I wanted to watch them pupate and go through the whole process.

[ButterflyLdy]

I take as many eggs as I find. The babies have a much better chance of survival if brought into my butterfly cage. I see evidence of cats, but no actual cats on my milkweed plants. I even saw a chrysalis on the siding of my garage and by the time it took me to run inside to get my camera and come back out -- it was GONE! I couldn't believe something had gotten to it so fast. As long as you have a good source of milkweed (This year I have my own patches - 5 in several sections of my yard) you should be fine. I'm so glad I found this forum - it's great to have a place to go for support and to get questions answered.

Rebecca

[MILW]

I like to bring in every egg I can find, too, but we recently had a disastrous attack by ants- I had a stalk of milkweed on my porch with a bunch of 1st and 2nd instar cats on it, but I left the stalk leaning against the screen porch wall. In the morning I found thousands of little ants swarming up the wall and onto the milkweed, and each baby cat had about 25-50 ants attacking, maybe more. Some of the ants were dragging away the poor cats! Others seemed to be all shriveled up and sucked dry. I managed to save some of them, it seemed like the ants mainly attacked the immobile ones that were preparing to molt. Needless to say, I won't be leaving any babies out on the porch from now on!
-Scott

ps on a lot of my plants outside, I find the little ring of feeding damage from a first instar cat, but no sign of any older ones- so they seem to be lost as eggs or first instar mainly.