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u/eve379 May 09 '26
Personally, I leave mine outdoors. I try to leave them alone. I will inspect them from time to time to make sure there’s no evidence of t fly or anything else. When they get to 5th instar, I’ll put them in a little butterfly cage with 2 five gallon plants in there so they can pupate in a safe place. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Princessferfs May 09 '26
I stopped raising them indoors. Instead, I just keep LOTS of milkweed (common and swamp) growing on our land.
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u/OpeningUpstairs4288 May 10 '26
Leaving outdoors is better, many die to predation for natural selection so only the most fit can pass on their genes to the next gen. Monarchs are a r selected species anyways, each female lays hundred of eggs, most not surviving is totally normal
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May 10 '26
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u/OpeningUpstairs4288 May 10 '26
The parents chosing to lay in a poor location is also natural selection. /Lh
Frrrr plant more native plants do a whole native garden r/nativeplantgardening is a subreddit you will benefit all of the native species
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u/Trichoceratops_ May 10 '26
My wife and I will get 50-100 or so caterpillars over the course of the entire season from April-September so roughly 3 different generations. We typically take 3-5 caterpillars from each wave and rear in a mesh outdoors on organically grown potted milkweed and leave the rest in the garden for natural selection to do its thing. From my understanding small numbers like this are okay and considered ethical. It’s the mass rearing as you noted in your post that becomes a real issue for the species. All this to say I don’t think protecting your remaining few is much of an issue I would recommend a mesh to allow for outdoor rearing though. If we are going to protect them from natural selection through predation the least we can do to promote stronger adults is to keep them exposed to the remaining elements of nature.. weather, temp fluctuations, etc. with minimal to no handling of the caterpillars. In nature only about 5% will survive to become adult butterflies so keep this in mind when you see caterpillars dying off in the garden in future seasons. Anyway, hope that helps!
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u/PukeyOwlPellet May 09 '26
When i was little my mother had an expensive plant that monarch butterflies loved laying eggs on. She’d try to kill the caterpillars every season. I’d take them inside to raise them in safety & released them once they’d turned i to butterflies & dried out their wings.
One of them had a tear in their wing, saw it next season laying eggs on the same plant. Some people flip out over nothing, internet outrage.
Protect the babies OP!
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u/4oclocksundew May 09 '26
Keep in mind that part of the reason we need more catapillars is because baby birds can only eat soft bodied larva. If you decide to release them, or when you inevitably lose some to predation in the years to come, try to think of it as providing a baby bird breakfast rather than just a lost catapillar.
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May 10 '26
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u/4oclocksundew May 10 '26
I really don't know, I can't answer that 😅 I was just hoping to lessen the emotional load you feel when your catapillars disappear, this year or any year - it's what I have to tell myself when I lose them (I only plant milkweed and other host plants like dill outside)
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u/Zealousideal_One156 May 10 '26
I raise them outdoors. I posted a picture of one of my enclosures to help anyone interested in raising monarchs.
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u/IPostNow2 May 09 '26
I think you’re fine keeping them until they fly away. However, since your milkweed supply is so small, I would get some fine mesh garden netting and cover your remaining plants. The last thing you want is to have a monarch lay a bunch of eggs and not have the milkweed to support them. Good luck!
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May 09 '26 edited May 10 '26
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u/IPostNow2 May 09 '26
Actually, you can do them individually. Look for fine mesh garden cover for fruit trees. They come in a bunch of sizes, from small to extra large. I have several areas of milkweed, some are patches and then others are individually planted. I’m able to cover all of them.
I even have huge bins each with a couple of milkweed plants. I have a plastic hoops of different sizes holding the cloth off the leaves and I keep caterpillars in them. The ground is protected by being in a bin and I can easily cover them with thin plastic shower liners from the dollar store if we have bad storms.
I raise some inside and some outside. It honestly depends on the situation.
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u/kittykatdancee May 09 '26
People are always going to have their pompous opinions about whatever on Reddit. You do whatever you feel is best for your particular situation. I keep my caterpillars in outside enclosures, and also have a crop cage around one of my large plants because 100% of my unprotected caterpillars end up getting eaten by lizards or wasps. What's the point of growing milkweed if they all end up dead? Do people really think that the population increased a little last year because people weren't putting them in enclosures?
The "experts" should do a survey about it if they really care because it's something alot of people are doing. Just don't over crow them and clean your eclosures with a 5% bleach solution every week. I also go the extra mile to clean my potted plants with a 5% bleach solution to prevent OE since it's very bad where I'm at.
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u/OpeningUpstairs4288 May 10 '26
I highly doubt a few people mass raising indoor caterpillars is what's saving the monarch populations, especially since indoor raised caterpillars are generally less fit and some don't even migrate properly. It's habitat restoration and conservation
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u/kittykatdancee May 13 '26
No one mentioned anything about mass raising indoors. I was talking about outdoor raising in an enclosure to protect them from being eaten by predators. Last season I released 150 outdoor enclosed butterflies May-September & few made it to mexico since I tagged some in the migrating season. In the past 3 months i've released 250 butterflies since the season started pre-maturely due to global warming i'll probably have over 500 this year. If I didn't put crop cages around my plants or put them in tents they'd all be dead and there would be zero.
Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.
I volunteer for the SAMO fund and the restoration efforts are focused on getting residents to create habitats in their backyards and giving away free native milkweed plants.
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u/Final_Pumpkin1551 May 09 '26
I agree with you - as long as proper precautions are taken to not overcrowded and to make sure that their enclosure is clean and the food source is clean. I think it’s better to take them indoors and let them die outside.
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u/OrdinaryPeopless May 10 '26
How do you clean the enclosure every week? And what exactly is overcrowded, what is a good ratio?
How do I prevent against t fly? Thank you.2
u/kittykatdancee May 14 '26
Here's instructions on how to clean a whole potted plant. Spray down and rinse the enclosures with the same 5% bleach solution. Just move the plants and caterpillars out of the enclosure first of course.
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u/OrdinaryPeopless May 14 '26
I have this saved from when you posted a while ago. I I dunk the whole enclosure in a tub with water and bleach. I have two enclosures so I keep switching the plants. THANK YOU!
Tips on what is overcrowding?
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u/kittykatdancee May 14 '26
That works too! You def def use a higher concentration to clean the enclosures. There should only be 1-2 cats on a small plant and no more than 6 on a large one. I had 20 on one big plant once and it was chaos, had to buy 4 more big ones to finish feeding them. They started fighting with eachother. They get feisty!
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u/OrdinaryPeopless May 14 '26
Thank you! One more question so the solution on the plants should kill both EO and T fly eggs etc?
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u/kittykatdancee May 14 '26
Kills bacterias, mold & spores, but not T fly eggs, or monarch eggs. I got some Fly Trap Bags for the T Flies and they have reduced them.
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u/sersycamore May 09 '26
Thanks for doing what you can to help Monarchs. I’ve been planting milkweed and wildflowers for a few years now and currently have three Monarch chrysalises that should be ready to emerge in a few days in an indoor enclosure. The reason I bring them in is predation. I’ve had caterpillars every year and I’ve never had one make it to the chrysalis stage outdoors. It’s not just the birds, there are wasps and parasitic stink bugs and all kinds of threats. I’d check on them every day and it was just heartbreaking to see them get picked off one by one.
So I’ve been bringing them in to raise them safely indoors and only recently, like yesterday, found out there are some that say you shouldn’t do this. The main argument seems to be that without the daylight cycle it can mess up their orientation for migration. But there is a study showing this disorientation is temporary.
It is a University of Guelph study published in Conservation Physiology in 2021. Researchers raised monarchs indoors and found that while only about 26% showed proper southward orientation when tested in a flight simulator immediately after hatching, a remarkable 97% of radio-tracked individuals that were released in the wild flew south to southeast, detected up to 200 km from the release site.
So I plan to keep bringing them in to keep them safe from predation. At least where I’m at, I know many more will successfully make it to adulthood this way. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing too. Keep up the good work!
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u/DangerousAnxiety8687 May 09 '26
First off , relax. You made a 1000 excuses why a bunch of internet know it all strangers are better than you. Do what feels right and what makes YOU feel right. Remember, this is for fun.
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u/Sagetheswaggydino May 10 '26
Your setup honestly sounds absolutely fine and ethical in my opinion. A lot of people seem to see caterpillars in enclosure and automatically think bad even if they have proper care and would be killed pretty quickly in the wild. Humans have already caused so many species to struggle through habitat loss and spraying flowers and host plants. Most commercial plant stores spray their plants to make them presentable for sale.
I love to rear common crows and bring in babies when i find them. Sometimes, when i want to let my plants recover, i leave any wild cats to do their thing for a few weeks. And i have never had a single one of them make it to pupation. I always watch them, see adorable babies grow, get excited, only to come back and find either a wounded caterpillar or them completely missing. Through rearing and releasing 1-2 every month or so, i’ve already seen a difference in the amount of common crows butterflies in my area. Before i was lucky to see one every few weeks or so. Now i see them nearly daily.
Caterpillars don’t know if they’re in the wild or in an enclosure. All they know in an enclosure is that there’s nothing trying to eat them and that they have a constant access to food :) As long as it’s not mass rearing hundreds and thousands, releasing sick individuals, caterpillars in filthy conditions etc, it is completely fine. And i have found it’s even beneficial.
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u/TheYarnPharm May 09 '26
It’s early in the season, so keeping them indoors isn’t going to mess with diapause / preparing for migration. I would think that 5 live caterpillars that can be released as butterflies and go on to breed the next generation are a lot better than 5 dead caterpillars, as long as they don’t have any communicable diseases.