Painted Lady Butterflies

This year is the second time we've raised painted lady butterflies.  Each year, we've ordered the caterpillars in the spring.  It's always an exciting day when they arrive.

Continue reading "Painted Lady Butterflies"

In the beginning...

I've made a series of blog entries that follow the events.  

The first entry was the day the our butterfly larvae arrived.  We carefully followed the directions and were intrigued by these new creatures who would be living with us.

Fairly quickly, we wanted to better see what was going on, so we built our own Butterfly Habitat.  That made it much easier to watch the facinating lives of caterpillars and then we realized how much they pooped.  A caterpillar's main job is to eat lots of leaves, and all that fiber goes somewhere.

All of a sudden, we found our first butterfly Chrysalis.  We had been watching for them to spin a cocoon, but that's not what happened.  First the caterpillars would hang in a J shape and then suddenly, a chrysalis would be hanging in it's place.

We got some good photos of the Butterflies as they emerged.  Then we had to fun of figuring out how to feed a butterfly before we released them.  It was a great first time of raising butterflies and we all learned a lot.

The second year year was much easier.  We had lots of fun with our caterpillars and butterflies.  There are some good photos of a butterfly emerging from it's chrysalis.  This year, we learned more about how to feed butterflies.

That's when the fun really started.  My son talked me into keeping some of the butterflies so that they could mate and lay eggs for us to raise.  I had no idea how butterflies mated, or even how long the process would take.  

The life cycle of a painted lady butterfly is fairly short, so it seemed like almost no time before we had butterflies laying eggs!

In four short days the larva emerged from the eggs, and the cycle started all over again.  We used our digital microscope to get some great photos and even some video clips of a larva crawling out of its egg.

If you want to do something about butterflies today, why not  make a butterfly.

You can order some butterfly larvae for your home and watch them grow into caterpillars. Then comes metamorphosis and butterflies. The 2-foot tall, newly redesigned Butterfly Pavilion "pops-up" easily. Its see-through mesh and zippered entry allows easy access for care and feeding. Includes Pavilion habitat, free mail in certificate for 10 Painted Lady butterfly larvae with special food and complete instructions. Get your butterfly pavilion now!

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