Monarch Butterflies

Jazz

Tractorologist
Member
We been collecting monarch larvae from a milkweed in yard and bring in house to go through their stages. This is to reduce their mortality rate. Cattarpillar spins itself into cocoon in about 2 minutes. We have released 6 this week. E2C50CBF-9860-46B7-A516-F50211D85251.jpeg
 

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Monarch caterpillars have no natural predators. They eat the milkweed which is highly toxic, thus the caterpillar is toxic if eaten by birds etc....

Its great your doing that to help them along. We plant large area's of milk weed on our properties. More people should dedicate space. Milkweed seeds are available online and easy to grow
 
Our new place sprouts milkweed anywhere I don't mow. Even the new garden which I plowed, disked several times and roto-tilled several times has them sprouting.

I've seen some monarchs around but no caterpillars yet. Of course I haven't looked for them and they do have decent camouflage.
 
Neither is the spraying. Local REC and county sends guys out with a spray truck they go hog wild. Utility sprays plumb thickets that only get about 12' high. County spray anything that might resemble a plant including the milk weeds. We have two areas that grow milk weed. Also have an old plastic bird bath bowel full of Pea Gravel filled with water for all butterflies.
 
I am conflicted on this issue.
We go round the hay fields, and pull the Milkweed out. Also used 2,4D this year to get rid of weeds (mostly goldenrod).
I leave as much milkweed I can on the edges where I know/hope it won't blow back in to the fields.

If the monarchs and bees die out, we're all gonna starve.... :oops:
 
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We have a lot of the Monarchs in our area. My wife has certain flowers and a few of the butterfly watering bowls with rocks in them. She’s been wanting me to build a few butterfly houses but I haven’t had time. We also which I appreciate more than my wife is wildflowers. One of my favorites is the butterfly milk weed that’s one of two orange wildflowers I’ve seen in our area.
9BBE46A1-98B4-4880-8B0A-AEDB43A941EB.png
 
Our new place sprouts milkweed anywhere I don't mow. Even the new garden which I plowed, disked several times and roto-tilled several times has them sprouting.

I've seen some monarchs around but no caterpillars yet. Of course I haven't looked for them and they do have decent camouflage.
Caterpillars easy to see. I’m sure you have many. We released two more monarchs wednesday
 
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