Massive Eclosing Underway in Gaithersburg, MD

[ilsa]

After thinking I was a big-time Monarch midwife in 2008, I have managed to shepherd 215 cats into chrysalis this year. The eggs were laid on my tropical milkweed during the period August 16-19. First eclose was this past Thursday, Sept 10. There are already 20 healthy adults in my nursery so far. I'm going to tag them this year.

My biggest regret this year is not starting enough tropical milkweed early enough. I did have enough blooming by Aug 16 to attract the laying females (and I should mention that I midwifed 2 females and a male in July, but that was it!), and enough to feed the tiny cats for a week and a half. But then I had to harvest wild milkweed, which invariably comes with all manner of bugs and blights (as well as more cats!). I would much prefer feeding only milkweed that I raise myself. I live in a townhouse, by the way, and I don't have a gigantic garden. I raise just about all of my milkweed in pots.

I have lost about 8 cats, probably to OE. I also have two chrysalides that look suspicious. I'm thinking I'll let them attempt eclose (if they make it that far), but I'm bracing myself for the eventuality that I'll have to euthanize.

I also have one other unusual chrysalis -- well, actually, it just eclosed this morning -- that I will write about in its own topic.

Ilsa
Gaithersburg (technically, Montgomery Village), MD

[Mona Miller]

I just let go over 50 adults at the Monarch Fiesta on September 5. Luckily, they were not gravid. There's enough eggs/caterpillars already on the milkweed at Black Hill Regional Park.

We've had a couple of very cool days and cloudy. No Monarchs in my yard today other than the beautiful female that just eclosed. I'd bet they took the hint of the cold front and moved south. I just checked the wind direction NNW at 13 mph. Not a bad day to migrate.

[ilsa]

Mona,

Today would be a terrible day to release, but we have some really nice days coming up!

Ilsa

[Mona Miller]

Here the sun is shinning and no rain in the forecast. My yard is sheltered. I actually have a 30 ft. tall sound barrier wall in the back.

[ilsa]

Nice situation you have there. I raised the cats outdoors in "caterpillar castles", but I'm doing all of my eclosing indoors.

[Mona Miller]

Oh my gosh. You are going to have fun.

[Wyvern]

There is no way I could raise a lot of cats with tropical milkweed... stuff is just too tiny. The 40 or so cats I let attempt to naturally feed on the tropical I planted outside...they had it stripped bare before long. I ended up having to round them up and bring them inside to finish raising with the rest of the hoard on the common milkweed I was collecting.

I've almost reached my goal of 500 tagged this year...just 21 left to go to hit my magical number (but I have more tags on the way to help deal with the extra left overs - bonus lol). I'm actually coming down from my massive eclosings (30-40 a day was common for a while there). Today I only tagged 10 and 2 of them were wild. I apparently missed a few cats out in the tropical milkweed patch and with the extended cool wet weather this week I found them hanging from their chrysalis skins having a hard time drying their wings. I brought them inside so they could at least dry off a bit..then tagged and set them back out in the garden.

One cute thing to thank the bad weather for.... my mexican sunflower (tithonia) plant is like out of control....almost 10 feet tall...the monarchs I've been tagging and releasing have been roosting on it. I have a Monarch Tree ! LOL.