Does Anyone Raise Monarch Butterflies?

[Brick243]

That sure did bring back some childhood memories. I was an Air Force brat and we lived in York and Kittery Maine for 4 years. There were monarch butterflys everywhere. I remember one special day with us kids finding wild blueberries in a field with monarchs flying all around us. I still miss all the outdoor fun we had in Maine.

 

[C-Dub]

Great shots.

Thanks.

 

[monarc23]

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I honestly don't know about swallowtails and luna moths. I know that lunas are really rare and have specific requirments to get to adulthood i have a cacoon right now that I found it was HUUUUGE i mean like fist sized, i opened it up... and inside was a smaller caccoon (still huge) i had no idea wha t i was opening was a caccoon inside a cacoon lol! Anywho... its in my brooder shed and im anxious to see what kind of moth hatches out. I will

if it's a luna! LOL!

 

[monarc23]

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[monarc23]

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I dunno how they get there some suggest they follow the heat currents down. I dunno

they go down there to over winter (to stay warm-ish) then they fly back up and lay there eggs!!!! that's what im waiting on here

For this, my THIRD year

 

[saddina]

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And know you have your halloween costume ideas too, see the great stuff I come up with when trying to avoid studing for grad school?

 

[monarc23]

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And know you have your halloween costume ideas too, see the great stuff I come up with when trying to avoid studing for grad school?

haha yes that's very apparent now

 

[saddina]

Eeep! busted, ok ok off to write a paper

To be fair it's an intro class, I'm getting my masters in a slightly different disapline, but the 101 class is required, so instead of child & Adolesent dev., it's human dev, the first 75% is identical to a class I've aced.

 

[poultryhaven]

I love those pics Monarc23!

 

[cyanne]

The hubby and I stumbled into the hobby of raising butterflies a few years ago. I bought a bunch of herbs for a kitchen garden and started finding all these caterpillars on my parsley and fennel plants. They were destroying the plants, but were so pretty that I didn't have the heart to kill them. Instead we brought them inside and kept them in one of those clear critter habitat things.

I tried feeding them all sorts of plants, but they would only eat the parsley, fennel, or carrot tops. I did an internet search and found that these were also known as 'parsley worms' and that they are the larvae of the Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly. They only eat plants in a certain family which includes parsley, fennel, carrots, and a few other things so they get a hard time from gardeners who don't want to share their crops.

We raised a couple dozen from itty bitty caterpillers all the way to butterflies that first year alone and released them into our garden. The butterflies are large and mostly black with lots of blue and yellow and their wings have tails on the bottom tips. In the years since then we have made sure to plant plenty of extra parsley and fennel plants in our landscaping to give the butterflies plenty of room to lay eggs and still give us enough parsley to eat.

This is the first spring we have not raised any, since we moved to our new place. We planted an herb bed with lots of parsley and fennel, but the butterflies have not found it yet.