My new additions.

[reggorf]

I am new to the forum but not to rearing monarchs. This past weekend, I went searching for caterpillars and ended finding 19 cats and brought back 5 eggs. Here are the pics of my cats and eggs and the butterfly house my Dad and I built for them. This was taken when I first got the milkweed. Now it is almost touching the top. I have 2 other clumps of milkweed in my yard that I planted, which is where 12 of the cats came from. Enjoy.

[texas butterfly]

Very cool pictures.

I like the butterfly house that you built. That is kinda what I am looking at doing as I have a small backyard and a fussy HOA.

You gave me some ideas on my butterfly houses. I may just want to make more than one and they might look cool against my back fence.

BTW, I did not see the poison dart from. Where was that?

Thanks for sharing!!!

[Mona Miller]

Awesome!! I love your butterfly rearing cage.

[reggorf]

The frog forum is www.dendroboard.com


Glad I could give you some ideas. I have a very small yard as well. This one is on my deck.

I have had a few of the eggs I collected hatch in the past couple days. I am going to put the bigger ones out into the butterfly house tomorrow. Man are they tiny when they hatch!

[Mona Miller]

They are so tiny that they can drown in a drop of water. I have to use 200 level magnification reading glasses just to see them now.

[reggorf]

I have all the little ones in a container in the house for now. I lightly misted the container so that it would not dry out too much. They are all doing well and growing fast. I am going to put a few outside tomorrow.

[reggorf]

So, I put the majority of the caterpillars outside in the Butterfly house. I went into the backyard to gather a few leaves for the 5 cats I have left in the house and found another cat and 2 eggs. I was not even searching for the eggs. One is on a seed pod so i left it. The other was on one of the leaves I pulled off to feed. Go figure.

[Mona Miller]

You've got to update your cat/egg count.

[reggorf]

I did. I think it is right now. But I have not been counting them as I move them. Just as I collect them.

[Mona Miller]

I know what happened. The signature is the same on all the messages so your other message was updated when you changed the number.

[reggorf]

So, some new things with the Monarchs. My friend came over and painted my butterfly house. Also, one caterpillar had formed its chrysalis and another is in the process. I also found three more caterpillars in my back yard. So, the total right now is 27 caterpillars and 2 in chrysalis. I had two eggs that I think dried out and are not going to hatch. Here are a few pics I took today.

[texas butterfly]

Nice photos. That one plant grew so tall and looks so healthy.

How you keeping aphids off plants?

Love the bluebonnets!!!!

[reggorf]

I have not had many aphids at all. If I see any, I generally tried to brush them off. I just cut off all my seed pods today to start drying them. I only had a few that had bright yellow bugs, which I am assuming are aphids. Somehow, I have been lucky in them not taking over and destroying my plants.

[Mona Miller]

Great pictures! I love your newly decorated cat house.

I ended up using an organic pesticide today on some aphids. They went crazy inside a sleeve tub of milkweed.

http://www.arborgrow.com/organocide.htm
Organocide

I would not spray this on milkweeds that have Monarchs.

[firewind33]

love the butterfly house!!!!!!!And your photos are awesome!

[reggorf]

I have three in chrysalis now. One was hanging from the milkweed plant and I did not move it before another caterpillar ate the leaf it was hanging from. Hope the little one inside is going to be ok. I bought 3 potted milkweed plants to add to the butterfly house and I still don't think that is going to be enough. I am going to have to start cutting stems. I have four more small ones inside my house that will be added to the butterfly house soon. I had to separate a few cats that were battling today for the same leaf. But, it did not do much good, as my husband said he sat and watched the battles later that night. So, I should have butterflies to tag within a week. Yay!

[reggorf]

As of today, the count is

Chrysalis-18
Cats-11

2 of my eggs never hatched. So, according to my excel spreadsheet, I am only missing 3 cats. Not sure what happened to them or if they are just hiding from view. I have had a couple form their chrysalis in places hard for me to see. So, here's hoping for the best. I will add more pics soon.

[Mona Miller]

If you have eggs in the same container, a new caterpillar will crawl over and eat its sibling.

[reggorf]

Here are a few of my chrysalis'. I have 5 more that are about to start hanging today. I am going to move the 6 I have in containers in my house into the butterflly house soon.

[Mona Miller]

Just noticed how large the holes are in the container that you have your milkweed. Monarch caterpillars cannot swim and may follow the stem down to the water.

[reggorf]

The big ones cant fit through that hole. The milkweed fills up the entire hole. I dont have any small cats in that house. The small ones are kept inside. The holes are a little bit bigger than a pencil. I have aquafoam in the container too, so there is really one about 1.5 inches of water way at the bottom. Actually right now, there is only one cat that is still eating in the whole butterlfy house. The other six are inside and I may keep them inside until they are ready to find their final hanging spot. I will move them to the big house shortly before that. They have eaten all of the potted milkweed and the stems that I cut do not last that long. I have a smaller screen house inside where i can put shorter stems in small container of water.

[reggorf]

So I just went to a place where I collected a couple cats a few weeks ago. I found that someone had sprayed something to kill an invasive plant and it also was killing the milkweed. I found and brought home 9 cats that were scattered around all this dead foliage. I am going to keep these separate from the rest in case what ever was sprayed is harmful.

[Mona Miller]

It makes me sick to hear that. One year someone got stung with a yellow jacket. The school called to have someone spray. They didn't use a spray that was safe for food so I had to pull up all the cherry tomatoes.

[applestar]

Yesterday, when I checked on the cats before going to bed, I was appalled to find that a 3rd instar cat had somehow managed to squeeze past the milkweed stems and leaves crowding the neck of the brown tincture bottle and had drowned in the water. I immediately spilled out the water and the cat in the sink, and watched for any sign of movement, but it was obviously dead.

I gently picked it up with a square of toilet paper, apologized to it for my inattention, and was about to toss it in the toilet or the brown paper bag I keep in the bathroom for TP tubes and other compostables, when something prompted me to leave the TP square with the cat on it on the vanity by the sink. I think I had the vague idea of showing the kids what had happened in the morning. I got a couple of more squares to put under the TP square to cushion it, bade it good night and turned off the light.

Imagine my surprise and pleasure when I found the cat half way up the bathroom mirror this morning!

@Reggorf That's not a house, that is a grand mansion! I love it. It's beautiful!

[summerluver]

We put our cut stalks of milkweed into canning jars with Glad "Press and Seal" wrap. We had a big cat fall into our jar a couple of years ago, and my daughter recesitated it by stroking it for a while. Since then, I take a post-it and cut a "T" shape into it, which I put on top of the wrap around the milkweed to keep anyone from wandering down for an unintended swim. Haven't had to do any lifesaving since then!

[reggorf]

I released my first Monarch of the season today. I have another one to release tomorrow. Both are males. I am going to need to get more tags. I only have 25. I have to change my signature soon too. I forgot to add the most recent ones that I found.

[Mona Miller]

You'll soon find that everytime you take in milkweed to feed your crew that there will be more eggs and young caterpillars. There's still time to have two generations in my area, if the weather holds. I'm in zone 6B to 7A.

[texas butterfly]

You mean I may have 3 or 4 more generations in my area!!!

I'm in zone 8 and 9.

[Mona Miller]

I think you said you are near Houston. You could have Monarchs year round depending on your weather.

[reggorf]

We have released 16 butterflies since the 23rd. I had my nieghbors, my dad, and a friend over tonight to release 10 of them. I have found it is much easier to tag them at night when they are sleeping, so they don't all try to fly out of the house. But, now I have made a canopy to put on the house while I am opening the door and it is ok if they fly out. Check it out.

[summerluver]

I love your butterfly house! I found one new baby on my tropical mlkweed yesterday to my delight, and one egg. I don't think I'll find any more this year, as it's getting rather late and cool at night here in N.J. Had two butterflies emerge today and thank God they look healthy. We'd lost over 50 to O.E. so this is quite a happy event - hopefully we're over it. Had 6 cats climb to the top, so I set up my butterfly condo. to keep the new butterflies in, and put the climbing cats into where they can J. It looks like I'm going to have 6/7 butterflies emerging tomorrow, so I don't want cats climbing all over them, or being disturbed by exploring butterflies walking around my habitat on cats as they're entering their final molt. One of the cats beat me to it, and settled in among a bunch of chrysalis's before we had the condo ready, so we'll hope for the best as 2 of them look really dark tonight and will yield butterflies tomorrow.

[Mona Miller]

Amazing what you can come up with when you need an alternative way of doing things. Cool.

Yes, fall is coming. It was in the very low 60s this morning in my yard.

[reggorf]

Just an update from last year. We have built another butterfly house for the State Park where I work. So, the guests will get to learn about the Monarchs and go out into the park to search for cats. I am also building one for my friend. We have made some modifications to the design so stay tuned for new pictures to come once we get them both set up.

[blazing star]

I love the butterfly house! Seems so much easier than raising them inside and picking fresh leaves every day. It's so cute, too.

[reggorf]

Thank you. We have built several more houses since then and made some modifications. I hope to modify mine this year to make things a little easier.