One of our favorite things to do especially in early summer is to find monarch caterpillars and raise them. As soon as we see the first milkweed popping up and the monarchs flying around, we search to find the tiny caterpillars. They start out at about 1/4" long and you can only barely see the bands of color on them.
common milkweed plants
Thankfully around here, milkweed is plentiful so it's easy to feed them. We had a bunch in small plastic containers with holes punched in the lids since we were short on containers since we're also raising cecropia moth caterpillars. When they got closer to full-grown and ready to make their chrysalises, we would put them in our butterfly cage we have. When they're full-grown (1 1/2" +), they climb the sides up to the top and hang in a J. They often stay in this J for up to a day before splitting their skin and becoming a chrysalis. It's always neat when we get to see the caterpillar becoming a chrysalis!
Right now we are at the chrysalis stage with our first batch of caterpillars. We have 10 chrysalises right now! Probably in a day or two we should have the first monarchs emerging. We're starting to be able to see the color of the monarch through the translucent chrysalis. Here's a great pic that I took tonight of the chrysalises!
3 chrysalises - you can just barely see the orange wing through it. My son who loves these caterpillars and butterflies is seen looking at them in the background with his bug PJ's on!
The day that these will emerge, the chrysalis will get very dark - almost black and you'll be able to see the orange of the monarch easily. Once they emerge their wings are crumpled and they pump the blood into them. We sometimes give them a drink of sugar water, but often just let them go as soon as their wings are ready and they fly off to find a good plant to eat from.
If you've never raised monarch caterpillars before, look for milkweed. They're common along roadsides or in weedy areas around town as well as in the country! Watch for monarchs landing on milkweed leaves and you can watch the egg and pick it off or wait to see if a caterpillar comes out there and bring it home. When they're tiny they're easy to lose, though so make sure you have a good container! What an incredible transformation to watch!
One of our many caterpillars
common milkweed plants
3 chrysalises - you can just barely see the orange wing through it. My son who loves these caterpillars and butterflies is seen looking at them in the background with his bug PJ's on!
Our Journey Into The Country - A Faith Walk