HOW TO FIND AND RAISE MONARCH EGGS
By Rosemary Thornton
If you wish to raise a monarch butterfly, it is best to start with an egg. To find an egg, look for common milkweed plants and check the underside of the leaves, starting at the top of the plant and moving down. Females try to lay eggs on new, young plants, so look especially for those. However, eggs have been found on old plants, too, so check them all.
Eggs are the size of a pinhead, cream colored and oval shaped, and are noticeable sticking out on the underside of the leaf. The eggs have ridges that are visible through a magnifier, so you can verify what you have found.
Strip the leaf off the plant; the plant will re-grow from that spot. When you get indoors, cut off about half of the leaf, so the egg is on a smaller portion of the leaf. Place it in a baby food or very small jar with a tight fitting lid. Larvae hatching are extremely small and can even crawl out of a tightly closed jar.
Check the jar several times a day. When you notice droppings the size of pepper, add a portion of fresh leaf. As the larva grows, move it to a larger container. The jar should be moist inside but not wet.
As the larva grows, it will shed its skin 5 times (molt), and will crawl away from the leaf for about 24 hours each time it prepares to molt. Don’t disturb it during these times. Be sure the larva is in a container with an opening large enough for the butterfly to get out when it emerges.
Before the last molt, the larva will spin a silk mat and hang from it in the shape of a J. About 8 hours later, the larva’s skin splits and it wiggles until the skin is off, revealing the green chrysalis. Eight to twelve days later, depending on the temperature, the butterfly will emerge.
The butterfly emerges looking like a large wet bug with shriveled wings. As it hangs, the wings slowly will increase in size and stiffen. The butterfly will need several hours to dry before it is able to fly. Then it can be released outside. If you plan to tag it, you will need to keep it for 24 hours. It will not need to eat during this time, but keep the jar covered to keep out light so the butterfly will not flap and injure its wings.
For tagging information, access Monarch Watch at: http://www.monarchcanada.org/monarch.htm
RAISING WILD LARVAE
You may find larvae of different sizes as you are hunting for eggs. These are also fine to raise, but are possibly infected with parasitoids. This means that a fly or wasp may have laid its eggs under the skin of the larva, leading to its death when the eggs hatch and the maggots feed on the larva’s organs.
However, you might be interested to watch what happens in the jar as the maggots crawl out of the larva’s body (or chrysalis), change to pupae and finally emerge as adults. It’s another part of nature!
A Website of Facts on Monarch Butterflies
. http://www.monarchcanada.org/monarch.htm