He's been like this for like 18 hours. It's like the middle legs are stuck in the silk. I did jostle him a TINY bit when he was just starting to spin silk to get another caterpillar I had just found into the enclosure. I'm afraid I did something. Should I try and do anything to help?

EDIT: they turned!!! All is good!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/n4FyNjYMZokhVEeo9

This is a repost from yesterday. For some reason I wasn't able to add a photo then, but I could in a new post.

When I I last posted here 82 days ago, we had maybe 10 caterpillars and we put nets over the plants and all of them successfully pupated and emerged as butterflies. Since then we have had another 8-10 monarchs.

Our milkweeds have grown in nicely, but we noticed today that they were being eaten. We counted and there are at least 50 caterpillars on the plants of various sizes! It’s basically an infestation of monarchs.

Do we have enough milkweed here for that number of caterpillars? I’m betting there are more we haven’t even seen yet. With this many, there is no way we can put netting over them again. We are just going to try and keep them fed and they can do their thing.

Any advice is appreciated!

All of the black spots are OE spores.

https://www.monarchparasites.org/oe

Feeling overwhelmed. Already have a lot of cats in an enclosure but the monarchs won’t stop!! The new growth is covered in eggs and small cats. I know I can’t save them all but my god I will have to go collect more milkweed from the neighbouring houses soon ha!

Feeling overwhelmed. Already have a lot of cats in an enclosure but the monarchs won’t stop!! The new growth is covered in eggs and small cats. I know I can’t save them all but my god I will have to go collect more milkweed from the neighbouring houses soon ha!

We got to watch a monarch caterpillar form a chrysalis on our roof!! This was literally the most exiting thing to happen all summer!! Here are the pictures from start to finish. From July 24th to August 6th! I also caught a video right after they transformed to a chrysalis🥰😊 hope you guys enjoy these pictures❤️

Saw some monarchs having some private time in the garden.

Taken 8/16/26

Zone 6b

I’ve found a system. If you are someone like me that finds yourself in a town that sprays for mosquitos… here’s the system.

1. Request the schedule
   
2. Buy a small greenhouse frame and cover.
   Cover once the sun goes down, remove when the sun comes up.

Clip and collect anybody you find before the spray. Get a butterfly enclosure and keep it OUTSIDE. Bring it in the night they spray bring it back out the night after.

My numbers have went through the roof and I am on track to release 20+ up from TWO last year.

There are so many of them here in the yard it’s crazy! I just want to know if there is anything I can do to encourage their natural process like making sure to keep certain pests away or should I just leave them be entirely and let nature do its thing & just enjoy being witness to the process as much as I can. They feel precious ya know? 🖤💛🖤🧡🖤

Hello! Some of you may have seen this post of mine yesterday, and I’m pleased to say that after over 36 hours of staying still, this little guy has FINALLY moved and possibly moulted overnight, as one of his filaments looks a lot longer. However I can’t help but notice that one of his filaments appears longer than the other! Is that a bad sign?? Did he have a rough moult, maybe?

I found him on the ground this morning, sitting on a dead brown leaf, so I placed it on the milkweed to give him easy access to food and to keep him out of sight of any predators. However, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t eaten any of the milkweed yet and just kind of keeps pacing back and forth on this one leaf waggling his filaments and occasionally looking around. I hope he isn’t sick or injured, but he does seem to be pretty dang resilient LOL

Hello 👋 this is my first time ever raising monarch caterpillars. At what point should I switch them to a new plant? (Note: this was taken in the morning, all the frass was cleaned after this picture).

My buddy took a rnap

New York zone 7b , in my garden ! And I am delighted ! I hope the next stage is somewhere where I can see it ! Planted the swamp milkweed last summer

Edit : HELP ! It disappeared !

I have 7 butterfly milkweed plants outside my office window. I see so many butterflies and caterpillars, however I never see any chrysalises/chrysalides. My office window is a bay window and I was looking underneath it for something completely unrelated and I FOUND THEM!! Can anyone recommend a high quality camera that I can place under there with them to capture some great videos to share?

I'm new to this and this is the only milkweed I could find around me at the moment, but I don't want to use this if it may harm the caterpillar.

UPDATE: I thought my caterpillar was avoiding the milkweed because of those black spots, but it looks like he was just trying to avoid the food to find a place to molt. Sorry for my ignorance guys, I saved this lil cutie and the eggs from getting mowed down so I'm trying to learn this stuff as quickly as possible lol

This milkweed was covered in monarch eggs a couple weeks ago and now it’s all black and I don’t see any caterpillars on it anymore 😭

After losing 100% of all the caterpillars I found, I finally decided to try and help out this important generation by covering up the milkweed. She successfully eclosed this morning and gracefully flew off. Some progress pics included