I feel like a bad Mom! Tiny cats pupating

[applestar]

I wasn't feeling well the last few days, and was a little bit slow in replenishing their food/relied on others to feed. There are now two cats -- no bigger than late 3rd/young 4th instars pupating on top of their containers.

The thing is, there WERE some leaves and bits of leaves still left to eat. One of them had 3 other container-mates that are now happily eating. It wasn't like they were completely out of food, and I've had cats spend the night on nothing but stripped leaf vein and still resumed eating when fresh leaf was offered in the morning. These ones left new leaves that I gave them and went into J's despite all my coaxing to eat.

One has already turned into a tiny chrysalis and the other one's still doing his "curls".

[Mona Miller]

Unfortunately, they will do this if food is scarce--pupate early. But, it may be another problem and not your fault. If they are healthy, you'll have some tiny butterflies.

[skates4marty]

A friend last year had some mini's. (Mini C's that became mini B's) Her theory -- she was getting milkweed from the side of the road, so perhaps pollutants were stunting the cats' growth.

[applestar]

Well, one is a perfect little miniature, eye-balled at approximately 1/2 the size or normal chrysalises. But the other one is malformed and is showing brownish areas inside, also 1/2 the normal size -- I'll euthanize the 2nd one, and keep an eye on the 1st one....

[Wyvern]

A friend last year had some mini's. (Mini C's that became mini B's) Her theory -- she was getting milkweed from the side of the road, so perhaps pollutants were stunting the cats' growth.

Doubtful that roadside pollutants were the cause.. if it was then all the cats feeding on the milkweed by the side of the road would be stunted. I have raised and released over 225 so far.. have another 75-100 chrysalis waiting to eclose.. just collected another 70 or cats today and about 45 eggs.. so my goal of raising 500 this year is close. A good deal of the milkweed I collected this year was from the side of a busy road... I'm growing all nice big cats...only had 4 so far this year that were "minis". Most likely what is happening is just a random genetic disposition that causes a particular cat to fail to thrive and not metabolize nutrients properly that causes the stunting.

[applestar]

OK, NOW this thing is turning into a phenomenon.

There is a THIRD tiny cat -- a 3rd instar -- in J. this one had no reason to think it was deprived since the milkweed in it's container has been faithfully replenished... Except that it had crawled up to the top of the container as if it were going to molt, and stayed there for 48+ hours without moving. Its two container mates had no issues and have been munching away....

YIKES! I just now remembered Mona mentioning cats silking over other cats and chrysalises. COULD that have happened? Was it trapped up there? I don't think I saw any though I obviously hadn't checked specifically....

These three were all late additions -- found as 3rd instars and not raised from eggs -- from my own NON-pesticide/herbicide treated garden.

[Mona Miller]

I've had two caterpillars turn black and die. I don't use pesticides either. They can pick up diseases in nature. They can also pick up fly larvae. The flies are out pretty heavy now. Some people only bring in eggs to try to avoid the flies.

[applestar]

I tend to only bring in eggs myself, but sometimes there's just as good a chance that they'll go through all the stages and mature into butterflies, you kow? I do isolate the late additions.

Well, as it turns out, this third one is hanging limp now. Most likely T-flies. The cats usually don't show symptoms so early though. Usually, they let us feed and tend the cats until full 5th instar J or even to chrysalis stage before doing their "Alien" act.

[Mona Miller]

One year I had some caterpillars in those paint strainers on my patio. The flies hit them bad and laid through the paint strainer. They went in the later 3rd instar/4th. They'd go up to pupate and the dang fly larvae would drop out. It was very painful for me and the butterflies.