Written by Ann
It had been a few years since I have pursued this little summertime hobby, but I have had the chance to do so this summer and I thought I’d share it.
About ten years ago, I took a class through a nature preserve on raising monarch butterflies. I learned to identify the milkweed the eggs are laid on, find eggs and caterpillars, keep them healthy and well-fed through the metamorphosis into beautiful monarch butterflies, and tag and release them. I signed up to learn so that I could share this with my own children and their school friends. I ended up raising butterflies for a few years with children aged 5 to 13 years old, including the cub scouts I hosted weekly as a den mother. Children are as fascinated with the process as I was. We had a few “circle of life” moments when a monarch or two died before becoming a butterfly, but most often we had great success.
The monarch goes through four stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. The eggs are laid by the female throughout the summer on the undersides of milkweed leaves. These weeds grow along roadsides and in fields and are easily identified by their gray-green color, central stem, and rounded alternating leaves. When you break a stem or leaf, a milky latex bleeds out, giving the plant its name. The egg itself is tiny and cleverly disguised as a drop of this liquid. Many times we put the leaf and egg under a microscope to watch the caterpillar hatch and turn around to eat his eggshell for nutrients.
The caterpillar has a big job: eat, poop, rest, molt, and grow. A monarch caterpillar is striped yellow, white, and black. Five times it will molt, or shed it’s skin, and continue to grow. After about two weeks, the caterpillar will find a secluded spot in the butterfly cage, usually in a corner, and rest for about half the day. Then it will drop down, hanging upside down from its tail end, in the shape of a “J”, suspended through the night. By 11 the next morning, the skin will split from the head end, and a soft, flexible green chrysalis will pop out, wiggling while suspended to shed the caterpillar skin. After the skin falls off, the chrysalis remains still and dries to a hard shell. It is the color of the underside of a milkweed leaf, adorned with a thin black ridge and flecks of gold. This process happens quickly. I miss it more often than witness it, but it is a marvelous sight. The chrysalis is beautiful.
For the next two weeks, the chrysalis seems to remain still and unchanged. Of course it is not. The green liquid that fills the clear outer shell is really the cells of the butterfly and each must find its place to make wings, a body, antennae. The day before the chrysalis hatches, it turns black. Attentive children will see bits of the monarchs bright-orange coloration. Then, usually in the morning, the chrysalis splits, and a butterfly drops out, hanging on the chrysalis shell. The butterfly flexes it’s fat body and the wings unfurl. It usually remains still for hours so that the wings may dry. By the following day, the butterfly can be seen sipping nectar from flowers in its cage or juice from a clean sponge. We like to release them as soon as possible after that.
This summer I happened to notice milkweed growing while walking near the river. Sure enough, a small caterpillar was munching away at the plant. I brought it with me to the summer camp I am working at for autistic children. This little guy has fascinated and delighted so many of these children. They are learning patience now that it is in the chrysalis stage. They are anxious for the butterfly to appear. They seem to understand this is the same caterpillar they named “Jacob” two weeks ago. Many have initiated conversations with me about this caterpillar, which had been a goal for them. Many now bring me the interesting natural materials they pick up at camp, to be shared with all the other campers during the day. On the table with the caterpillar cage we have a pine cone, snake skin, turtle shell, shells from their beach vacations, sea glass, a robin’s nest with the broken shell still inside, a feather, and a cicada shell. It’s been a wonderful way to draw these children out and get them to talk.
Information about raising monarchs can be found at the website Monarch Watch, run through the University of Kansas.
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Comments
13 Responses to Raising Monarchs
Thanks Ann for the great post. I remember learning a lot about butterflies in high school biology but had forgotten most of it until I just read your post. This whole process is fascinating and more involved then I ever thought. I guess not quite as involved as a 9 month pregnancy.
What a great way of getting the children to open up at the camp. I love the name Jacob, how did they come to pick that? Butterflies are beautiful. I can’t wait to retire when I will have time to pursue some of these hobbies I have read about here at Imperfect Women.
Great story Ann! I love butterflies! I need to get some more plants/shrubs that attract them.
Please let us know how caterpillar Jacob is doing!
Ann, thank you, I learned so much. I can see it all so perfectly the way you describe it. I am jealous because I want to see one hatch under a microscope.
It’s amazing how it changes. We have hatched a couple of moths here and there and the kids love that. We have never caught them making it or breaking out. We always just find the chrysalis and then later on discover the moth.
I love hearing about the interest the children at the camp have in the butterfly and rest of nature they’re finding. So nice of you to make a point to do that with them.
I think it’s so cool that you tagged Monarchs.
This was a fascinating story. I am a city girl and not much of a nature girl so I only have a rudimentary knowledge about this stuff.
You described the process so completely I have a much better understanding. I learn so much from other IW ladies!
I love how you have incorporated this into your work at the camp. That is so cool.
Jacob hatched from his chrysalis on Thursday morning and we were able to release him on Friday. He was named well…it was a male monarch. One of the kids shouted out a name for him while he was still a caterpillar, and no one objected, so it stuck.
It was a joyous release on Friday. Storms threatened to spoil the afternoon so we released him after all the kids gathered in the morning. He flew very high to rest in a tree. I’ve never heard a butterfly get more cheers.
My family just visited gardens and a butterfly house today. It was so peaceful there! I definitely want a butterfly house at my home. Not practical, but very peaceful.
My daughter learned all about this in kindergarten last year- she loved explaining it to me and I learned a lot that I didn’t know. Thank you for sharing this- it really is fascinating
What does a butterfly house look like? What is it constructed out of?
Pam, I was wondering the same thing. I have seen hobby kits in the toy store to raise butterflies and release them. I never purchased one since we sometimes find a caterpillar and hatch a moth. I was also never sure if it was an eco-friendly toy.
A butterfly house sounds interesting and I want to know what it’s like.
There is more than one kind of butterfly house. Mine is 2 feet high. The top and bottom are pieces of wood, connected by four wooden corner pieces. Three sides are made of window screen. The fourth side is also window sceen, attached to the top and fitted with velcro across the sides and bottom to serve as a door. There is a handle for carrying. Mine is more elaborate than necessary because it was made for raising and hatching several butterflies at once.
A butterfly house only needs to be big enough to let a chrysalis hand with room for the adult to emerge and fully spread its wings. A large jar or plastic tub with screen over top for air is enough for one.
I think it is an eco-friendly toy. Purchasing eggs, larvae, and pupal cases is regulated and restricted in some states.
I release my butterflies within a day of hatching. I learned that the food I offer them and confinement makes them weak, so we let them go.
Thanks for the information Ann. My dad said he really enjoyed this article but is still somewhat timid on posting comments. I just thought I would pass that along.
Great piece, Ann. I will admit with some embarrassment that I’m afraid of butterflies. Yes, you read that right, afraid of butterflies. I really don’t like any big fluttery things. I can admire them aesthetically but I think I’d be afraid to raise them!
Still, it was a great idea to incorporate these into your work with the kids at your camp. I think that’s really neat.
Jennie, don’t be silly. Hello to your Dad, Pam.
When I first started raising the butterflies, my dad also took an interest. He has a beautiful flower garden, and would catch butterflies between two empty 2-liter soda bottles with the bottoms cut off. He did this to entertain grandchildren (always releasing them.) So when I had an extra caterpillar, I gave him one for his birthday, to keep at his desk, for fun. My parents were surprised by the caterpillar. My mom said that they squished the monarch caterpillars when they were little because they are ugly and she thought they were pests! (Guilt trip for Mom.) Pop’s caterpillar grew beautifully. He had a milkweed growing in the back that he used for food. Once the chrysalis forms, there is nothing to do but wait. While it is a caterpillar, food must be supplied and the frass (poop) cleaned out daily. He grumbled a bit about that last task. His birthday is the end of summer, so his was a monarch that joined the great migration to Mexico.
Neat hobby! I love that your kids named the caterpillar, so precious.
I always wanted a butterfly garden, and when we got to our new house 5 years ago we had a nice spot for one next to the deck. But a big pear tree was in the spot at the time. However it cooperated by splitting in three pieces during a storm and falling over, so we had it removed and voila, a nice 7 foot diameter circle of mulch, all prepared.
You can get milk weed at Lowe’s or Home Depot garden center, or I should say they CARRY them, however getting one is like getting nice underwear at the half off sale at Bloomingdale’s. They get like 6 plants and 14 of us ladies all want them and whenever you go in, they aren’t there yet, or they WERE there yesterday but someone got them all. I had two years go by where I was trying in vain to get them then someone told me our Garden Center has them and lo, they had them week after week, by the dozens. So that was nice. They grow wild all over – at least all over where I’ve ever lived, Ohio down thru GUlf Coast – but don’t always transplant well in the wild, I’ve heard. We’ve got them now in front, in back and on the side yards – many volunteers as well as the few plants we bought.
Anyhow we studied up on what the butterflies eat – because we wanted mature ones not just caterpillars – and stuffed our garden plot with BF weed, BF plant, BF cherry, lantana… the BF plant is so gorgeous and getting so big it’s really neat. We get huge black swallow tails and monarchs as well as yellow ones they call Sulphurs, I think. It’s fantastic to lie out on the deck and have the hummingbirds at the jasmine and wisteria on the fence, the little arbor my OH built, and the BF’s all fluttering over their little garden. My daughter says I look like Snow White out there feeding my birds (we also have really cute bright green lizards and two wild rabbits) LOL We got the Backyard Wildlife certificate – have to have five species living and eating there.
The kids have really loved this and they do pore over the milkweed to find the caterpillars, but I don’t let them take them into the house or off the plant, if they want to see one make his chrysallis or get out of it they have to do it the old fashioned way. Trying to teach them to respect nature…leave it where it is, if possible. In our case it is.
we ordered a tadpole to frog kit ($40!) some time back and once we did that one time, we were hooked, although now we get tadpoles out of the creek FREE instead of ordering the eggs from science school suppiles place online. They don’t require much in the way of care, the main thing is a place to release them once they are frogs. Otherwise a goldfish bowl with some rocks so they can get out of water and rest as they start breathing air, and of course the pellets (food). That’s about it, and it is fascinating to watch their legs grow and the tail reabsorb as they go from the fish like tadpole, to an amphibian. Beware if you have cats – get a screen for the top of the aquarium, we had a horrid tragedy the first year when one of our little frogs met his doom thru our cat and he didn’t get released into the creek with the others, poor guy!!
The 1st grade room does eggs hatching into chicks every year in their incubator, and tho my older son is now starting Jr High he still finds a way to get in there and visit and see it. Kids love this stuff and I do myself.