There are few joys available to butterfly enthusiasts as that of raising your own Monarch butterflies. Sure there are butterfly kits out there. But you can literally raise Monarchs from egg to butterfly and, if you live in the right area, you can begin the process out in the field. It’s not necessarily easy but it is a lot of fun. I have been doing this – or something like it – for many years. I started as a child and now I do it with my own children. And, in addition to being fun, it is a way to help the butterflies themselves.
Monarch butterfly eggs hatch awfully quickly – three to five days on average – which can make finding them a bit tricky. You need a bit of luck and you need good timing. If you can find the common milkweed plant, that’s your best bet. Look for them on the edges of less-traveled roads or out in hay fields or the like. Females lay their eggs on the underside of the leaf – in the wild, they tend to spread the eggs around in order to maximize the potential for lots of new Monarchs.
If you bring the Milkweed home, be sure that you keep the thick stem in water and that you have additional food for the butterfly to eat. Try and take the entire plant – this will increase the odds of a successful hatching. Wherever you store the plant – we use old fish tanks – keep them covered. You might want to lay some moist soft flannel or towels at the bottom of the cage and add a few drops of water to it daily.
The tip of the egg will grow dark when the larvae – that’s a caterpillar in lay language – is ready to emerge. When they do come out, they come out hungry so be sure you have an abundance of fresh milkweed for them. They’ll feed off the host plant if it is relatively fresh – that will work for several days.
Larvae grow quickly. It’s okay to handle them, but we generally try to avoid that. The risk of harming them is slight, but why take it in the first place? Enjoy watching them as they feed on the plant, the bright yellow and white stripes mingling with their deeper black.
When the caterpillars are ready, you will see them crawl to the top of the container in which they live. We keep a screened top which make it easy for them to attach. They use a soft silken thread to hang themselves, then form what some folks call the prepupal J shape. They look like colorful fish hooks! They’ll shed their skin, and the pupa will form. This a bright jade color that is truly beautiful to see.
Technically, it is okay to touch or handle – or even rehang fallen – pupae, but again it is not highly advised. In order for the butterfly to develop properly, it must hang.
And then begins the waiting game! It will take anywhere from ten days to as much as two weeks before your Monarch slowly emerges from the cocoon. Before that happens though, the pupae will slowly become translucent and you will see the dark wings of the butterfly enfolded inside.
If you want to watch them emerge, try and be available around mid-morning. That’s when most adults come out of the pupa. You must give them plenty of time to inflate their wings and prepare themselves for life in the real world. Do not handle them for at least eight hours and preferably more.
Once that window has passed, feel free to hold the Monarchs. Let them stand on your hand and slowly flex their wings. You can keep them for a while and admire them, but it is always fun to release them and watch them sail out into the wild. If you have a live butterfly garden, let them go amidst your many flowers and bushes so that they will have no trouble finding either food or shelter.
Raising Monarch Butterflies is truly one of the magical experiences of butterflies. You can even grow your own Milkweed to ensure that you have plenty of them around!
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