Fifth Year Raising Monarch Butterflies

This year, I found one Monarch butterfly on a milkweed plant across the street from me. Milkweed is their dependent food source and where they lay their eggs. It’s also a weed that grows wild all over the place. Although I eventually want to plant some, I don’t have any in my yard, but my neighbor has a few stocks, and my friend has a bunch in her yard.

After I found one, I texted my friend and asked if she could bring by some milkweed for the caterpillar. She hadn’t looked on hers yet this year, and when she did, she found 8 more! She brought them all over along with more food for them. So, in the beginning that was a total of nine. One was small, and it died within a week of having it. The rest spun into a chrysalis all within a few days of having them.

So far, I’ve released six. I gave one to one of my nurses, and the last one is drying its wings and I will release it later on. I know when to let it go when it begins moving around in the container and starts flapping its wings back-and-forth.. It takes about two weeks for them to undergo a radical reorganization of its tissues before it breaks free. Once they do, it takes about 2-4 hours for its wings to dry, and then I can release them. I was able to see all of them go from caterpillars and then come out into beautiful butterflies!

Since I had so many, my niece, Avery, got a chance to help release a couple of them. Like me, she likes butterflies as well. When she is a little older, I’ll probably give her a caterpillar or two to take care of and watch the whole transformation. Also, it is easy to tell if they are male or female if you can get a glimpse of the right area. The males have two black dots on the top of the bottom two wings. The females don't have any dots on their wings. So far I've released three males and three females.

Avery is so photogenic! Both of these butterflies are male.

Male butterfly on my arm.

Female butterfly

Jenni