monarch cats dying and one failed pupation...
sitali301
12 years ago
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mechelle_m
12 years agominrose
12 years agoRelated Discussions
PVS cat pupated!
Comments (2)Congrats on your PVS chrysalis! I've always thought they look like those stone statues on Easter Island. :) CalSherry hasn't posted in a long time. I sure wish she would - we miss her! MissSherry...See MoreBSTs failing at pupating, please advise.
Comments (2)I have not grown any plants myself. However, there is one place that I went to last year where they say they dont use pesticides. I have never had a problem with them so believe them when they say they dont use pesticides. I may have lost one or two BSTs last year. I got the dill at another place. I was trying to get a lot of rue to send off for GSTs. I am sure you have read about that disaster as you responded to the post. I asked if any pesticides were used. No one seemed to know, and they were going to ask the manager. Then someone found three dill plants with four BSTs one them. It was everyone's consenses, mine too, that since the BSTs were so large, close to pupating stage, that if the plants were toxic, something would have happened to the BSTs already. So I bought the dill with the BSTs and the rue. I did not give any of the ill-fated GSTs any of that rue. I gave them rue that I got from the same place I get most of my parsley, the place that doesnt use pesticides. When I got home today, I saw that the one that had been limp did indeed make a chrysalis, though it doesnt look all that great. It is small and grayish. The other one had formed a chrysalis as well. It is large and sort of grayish. Maybe overnight they will darken? Wow, over 100 painted ladies? I cant imagine raising that many. I hope you were able to contain the monarch virus. Gwynne...See Moredisappearing monarch cats?
Comments (6)Ditto on above post. The monarch once pupated is the exact shade of the plant leaves and stems. I noticed one of my monarch cats had pupated on a leaf this morning. There was another cat on the same leaf just statring to its process so I decided to leave my gathering alone until this evening. when I went out to check on them I swear that they were gone... I called my husband to help me look for them and he found three of them had just finished in the same area. Sometimes it just takes looking for them from a different angle to see them. I've also found that shaking the branches of the plant ever so slightly brings the little swings into plain sight again. I now have 18 of them in my indoor hatchery and there are still at least 8 more of the cats munching away on the leaves. I even went back to one of my defolinated milkweed plants in my greenhouse and found two more cats that I had missed when I tranfered the cats to the outside plants. These will be our first monarchs hatched out and we are both very excited about the prospect of adding a couple dozen more monarch cats to the great out doors. Love the little gold dots on the crystalys. I had no idea they they would be there.......See MoreNoticing More Sick Monarch Cats
Comments (19)Terrene, what kind of cage do you raise your monarchs in? Years ago, we had one summer where I though we had our first disease outbreak. we had always raised our cats in plastic ice cream buckets. Well, it turned out the bucket we used that year was toxic! The second we switched to a glass container all the sluggish caterpillars suddenly perked back up. Now I have two cages: This was my main cage this year. it works well except for when the caterpillars are in their first few days, they can crawl through the mesh: (so I put the wee ones in a glass bowl with paper over the top...only lost 1 adventurous cat this summer) http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=86231&v=discovery_toys-games_type_animals-bugs I also got another cage for next summer. I plan to put potted tropical milkweed plants and raise TONS of butterflies in a mini greenhouse: http://www.amazingbutterflies.com/butterfly_castles.htm I had one strange occurrence at the beginning of the summer. The first two monarch eggs I brought in off the tropical milkweed turned completely black so I just tossed them after a couple days. Nothing out of the ordinary after that. Here's to healthy cats and butterflies in 2011! Tony...See Morespaceman13
12 years agobananasinohio
12 years agositali301
12 years agoericwi
12 years agobeccalmt
11 years ago
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