Raising Butterflies 2010 ~Sept 1st through Oct 3rd 2010~

Here is our documentation of raising Monarch butterflies for this year.

I believe we raised a total of 14 butterflies.  September 1st, Ted, Chloe and Porter went to the West Des Moines Library and caught a handful of caterpillars and then we'd through the weeks we'd gradually find more caterpillars.  Our first butterfly hatched  September 19th and today during the break of Conference our last butterfly left for Mexico ... :)

We all love holding the sweet little fragile butterflies on our fingertips and feel the whole process is just a wonderful miracle.  As always, thanks Ted for enlightening us with the wonders of this world.

 For those interested in knowing.  These little black-yellow-while striped caterpillars are found on milkweed.  They eat TONS of the milkweed and when they're baby caterpillars they can triple in size in one day... you can almost see them growing.

 After the caterpillars have had their fill of food, they then proceed to make their chrysalis. The chrysalis stays this vibrant green until a day before they're going to hatch (about 10 days).  Then the chrysalis turns into what seems to be a black color, but really if you look closely you can see that it's just a squished up Monarch, ready to break out.

 

Ta-Duh!

 FYI -the above butterfly is a female Monarch

 It takes around 3-5 hours for the butterflies wings to dry so in the beginning holding them is not only fun, but very easy as long as your finger doesn't get tired of acting like a branch or steam.

 It true that Porter loves sticks more than the butterflies, but he still enjoys pointing and looking at them.

 Cutest chrysalis I've ever seen... :)

 This was our last one today... good-luck on your journey home!

At one point we had about 8 butterflies hatch around the same time, but because of rainy bad weather we had to keep them inside for a bit.  The video clip is of letting many of those butterflies go.