Newbie - Monarch Caterpilllar Questions

15 years ago

This year for the first time I started butterfly weed, swamp milkweed, and scarlet milkweed from seed by wintersowing. They are all still really small, but one day last week I saw two monarch caterpillars about an inch long on two of my butterfly weed seedlings. I was shocked because I had not even seen any butterflies yet and my plants are still a single stem only about 4 inches tall so I didn't expect anything this year. The next day though they were gone. Today I saw another monarch caterpillar (about 1.5 inches) on a butterfly weed and a nearby one was striped of all but the bottom two leaves. How much milkweed do they eat and how far do they travel to eat and make their chrysalis. I only have about 6 tiny butterfly weed seedlings. I would hate to have them starve for lack of food or kill the plants and then starve anyways. I don't have any more mature milkweeds yet.

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Comments (3)

bernergrrl
15 years ago
Hi, Welcome to the forum! Monarchs tend to eat quite a bit. You could bring them in to rear and find wild milkweed that usually grows alongside roads or in other uncultivated places to give them.

Are the seedlings gone or the caterpillars? If caterpillars, they could just be somewhere molting, getting ready to go to the next stage (instar). They also can wander quite a bit to find shelter to make their chrysalides. If you have plants nearby that offer shelter, they are probably in there. I often find the chrysalides on plants near the milkweed the caterpillar was feeding upon. The other possibility is that the caterpillars were carried off by predators, another reason we often bring caterpillars in to raise.

Good luck!
tdogmom
15 years ago
Check out my blog as I have a lot of info about Monarchs.

Here is a link that might be useful: tdogmom's Monarch Guide
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molanic
Original Author
15 years ago
Wow, that is a wonderful blog with great pictures! The caterpillar is back on the milkweed today, I guess it was just exploring. From those pictures it looks to be at a 4th maybe even 5th instar stage. Unfortunately, I do not have anyplace nearby to get any wild milkweed. It looks like it has already striped several seedlings except for a couple of leaves. Hopefully that will be enough for the seedling to grow back, while it munches on the remaining seedlings. I don't want to try bringing any caterpillars in yet since I don't have a supply of milkweed yet to feed them. Thanks for your help and all the information. I am going to start looking for more host plants for other butterflies to plant this summer, I already have plenty of the nectar ones. Are store bought host plants such as milkweed safe for the butterflies or do they have pesticides on them?

Newbie - Monarch Caterpilllar Questions

Comments (3)

bernergrrl

tdogmom

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molanic
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Newbie - Monarch Caterpilllar Questions

Comments (3)

bernergrrl

tdogmom

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molanicOriginal Author

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molanic
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