Raising caterpillars

One of our favorite things to do in the summer is raise monarch caterpillars.  There are kits available to buy if you don’t feel comfortable trying this yourself, but it’s so easy to do it on your own.

Start by finding milkweed.  The butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of the leaf.  The eggs look like tiny white footballs.  Here is a picture of milkweed:

The most telling characteristic is that if you break open a leaf, a white milky substance will come out. Hence the name.

We have generally found that we do better if we find the caterpillars already hatched. They are tiny, so you need to look carefully for them. This year we found a newly-hatched caterpillar, and when Zach was collecting milkweeds for it, he got one with an egg on it. It did hatch, and now we have two caterpillars! If you do find an egg, it generally takes about 4 days for an egg to hatch.

Monarch caterpillars feed only on milkweed, so all you have to do is replace it when it dries out or is about gone. It’s that simple! I mist it daily with just a bit of water to keep it from drying too fast. I have usually kept mine in a clean coffee can, but this year we have a bug zoo with netting around it so that it’s easier to watch them.

They are in the larva (or caterpillar stage) about two weeks. When the caterpillar’s eating seems to be slowing down and it’s about two inches long, it’s time to watch closely. We have only succeeded in watching the transformation to chrysalis once in all the years we’ve doing this, and it was fascinating! I usually put a stick in the container for them to crawl on and hang from (I do this so it can be moved to give them more room when they emerge from the chrysalis), but usually they end up going to the top of the container and hanging right from that. The caterpillar will hang upside-down in a J shape. They will do this for a day or two before they actually start their transformation.

Here are our current caterpillars in their current stage of development, along with our container (I will post more pictures as the caterpillars go through their stages):

The chrysalis stage will last for 10-14 days. It starts as a bright green color (the chrysalis itself is actually clear, and the green is the pupa inside) and gradually becomes orange and black — the colors of the wings developing inside. Again, it’s time to start watching. Just as the transformation to chrysalis, we’ve only watched the butterfly emerge once (they were two different years). It is a beautiful thing to watch.

After the butterfly emerges, carefully get it to a place where it can stretch it’s wings out and dry them. It won’t fly right away. At first the wings will look rumpled, but they will gradually plump out as the blood circulates. It is fine for the butterfly to walk on your arm — just be sure the littles don’t touch the wings! They are very, very fragile.

When you’re ready to release the butterfly, take it outside in the sunshine. They need the sunlight on their wings for that first flight. Watch them go, and say goodbye!

Here are a few fascinating facts I’ve picked up over the years:

*You can tell if you have a male because the male butterflies have a spot in the center of each hind wing.
*Monarchs hatched in early spring only live a couple of months. Only those that hatch in the late summer migrate south for the winter and then back north in the spring to lay eggs.
*Monarch caterpillars eat only milkweed, which makes them poisonous to most predators. The butterflies retain most of the poison in their systems so that they are also poisonous to birds.
*In the pupa stage, monarchs (as well as most other butterflies) do not spin cocoons. They molt and are then encased in a chrysalis. Moth caterpillars spin cocoons.
*Probably the most fascinating fact I read is that inside the chrysalis, the monarch body actually dissolves into a “living soup.” The cells then rearrange to form the body of the butterfly!

It’s not too late! The milkweed leaf I plucked today to feed my caterpillars had an egg on it, so we’ll soon have a third. The caterpillars you find this late in the summer will probably be the migrating generation, so when you see a monarch in the spring, it just might be your monarch!

Our youth pastor handed Zach some papers in church this morning.

It was a schedule of youth activities and a letter welcoming him to the youth group! How did he get to this point???? I’m sad and nervous and and excited all at the same time. I don’t want things to change. I want my little boy back. But I’m also so excited, because it’s going to be so much FUN!!!!

I am definitely less worried about it than I was a year ago, when I first found out he’d be joining the youth as a 6th-grader (instead of 7th as it’s always been in the past). This summer, he has grown tremendously. Just a year ago, whenever he was outside with his friends he would invariably come in either crying or grousing about how they were being mean to him. But this year we’ve had kids in our yard and in our house all summer, there are like 8 or 9 boys that he plays with regularly, and he’s gotten along with every one of them every single time.

I was worried, too, because there is a huge group of boys at our church about 3 years older than Zach. There are only two other kids Zach’s age, and he doesn’t know them very well. Zach has sometimes had trouble getting along with this group of older boys. But he seems to be coming into his own at church, too. He’s told me that they’re being a lot nicer to him, and I’ve noticed it, too. I’m just amazed at how he’s matured and learned to handle himself. I credit this with being in Boy Scouts and spending a lot of time with older boys in that setting. I think he’s learning what they expect of him and how to get along.

I think this will be Zach’s year. He’s in band, and he’s good at it, and my hope is that it will give him a place to shine in school. Band and youth group and Boy Scouts — a year of changes, a year of becoming a young adult, a year of some transitioning in my own role, and a year of fun and excitement and blessings!