Sorry about the dead ones, Cathy! :(
It sounds like the ones with the strings have been parasitized, don't know about the others - if you live in an area where lots of cat parasites exist, like tachinid flies and braconid wasps, then eggs are the best way to go. Just curious - did you feed your cats new growth or mid-mature leaves, or did you feed them old growth? In my experience, feeding new or middle growth leaves produces consistently healthy cats and perfect adults. I took my cue on this from the butterflies and cats themselves - female butterflies nearly always lay their eggs on tender new growth, and once the leaf a hatchling is on has gotten beyond the mid-mature stage, it'll move up the vine/plant to the tenderest new growth it can find. As leaves grow, they quickly accumulate the various chemicals that particular plant contains that repel insects - these chemicals are not healthy for caterpillars, at least in the early instars - you can feed older leaves to late instar cats, but even then, they don't like them as much as the young leaves. You can get new growth on many of your host plants just by pruning them. I pruned back some sweetgum trees that needed pruning anyway when I learned I was going to be getting luna moth eggs.
In summer in the East, especially the Southeast/Deep South, it's important that they get good air flow in a shady spot and NOT be in a plastic container - plastic containers hold in humidity, even with no top which can be deadly under summer conditions.
MissSherry

Thanks, MissSherry. It has been a discouraging past couple of days here. I still have some not making it. I don't know what else to put them in besides my plastic containers that I have. I have about 40 Juicy Juice bottles that I cut the top part out and put cheesecloth or pieces of screen over the tops of them fastened with a rubber band. I also have some in the big storage container where I had a lot of them die. I have a screen on top of that. I also now have 7 smaller storage containers that I bought at SuperWalmart for 99 cents each and cut a big rectangular section out of the plastic lids and put screen where that was. I was thinking that people here keep cats in plastic containers, so that's why I bought these. What I really like to keep them in is my big cage and then they can just crawl around on the plants and I don't have to keep supplying them with fresh leaves...a very easy way to raise them! BUT it only took them a little over a week to completely strip 25 plants and they're still recovering from that. I also would like to do some revisions to the cage so it's easier to get in and out of, so I don't know if I'll be using it anymore this year or not. Right now there are still pupas hanging in it.

I feed all kinds of leaves, whatever I have. Actually the cats that died probably ate mostly butterfly weed. I cut off the top of the plant and gave it to them. Since I'm running low on other milkweed, I resorted to using that kind even though it about reminds me of shoe leather. Ha. I'm not so sure I even want to continue to grow that type of milkweed. It doesn't stay tender to very long and even the most tender leaves on the plants aren't really what I consider tender. So is it a good idea to cut all of the tops out of the plants every so often? Exactly how do you do yours? I.e. how often and what part(s) of the plants do you trim?

A lot of these dead cats and pupas (almost all) had strings hanging down from them. In one container I saw a white worm crawling around where a pupa was that had a string hanging down from it. What do you do when something like that happens, just empty everything in the garbage or what? I imagine that if I'd just dump the contents of the containers outside somewhere that the creatures that came out of the pupas will live, right? So strings hang down in a cat was parasitized by either a tachinid fly or a brachonid wasp then? How can you tell the difference? Maybe I should just keep some of these containers until the insect actually becomes an adult and then I can see what is attacking my cats. It's gotten to the point where I feel like killing just about everything that I find on milkweed plants...milkweed beetles, milkweed bugs, oleander aphids, cinch bug eggs that I found a few weeks ago (I got the ID here), spiders, wooly aphids, practically anything I see but the cats and cat eggs. Even if I would find ladybug eggs, I'm not sure what I sure do with them. I was always told that they eat bad bugs, but if they eat Monarch eggs or larva, I don't want that! Just how does a person know what to let live and what to kill really? I never thought this would get so complicated. :)
Cathy

Cathy, sorry to hear about your problems. Though tachinid larva are one of the more disgusting things you will see, at least they are not contagious to your other caterpillars. Last year I had some third instars that tried J hooking and died. Some of them had strings coming out of them. I believe the others would have eventually had the strings come out of them but I didnt hang on to them to see! I dont see a reason to get rid of normal looking larva if you arent dealing with something contagious.

As for the strings hanging from the pupas, this is what I read. There is a lot of misinformation out there so I am only telling you what I read. I hope someone will correct me if I am mistaken. The fly lays an egg or several eggs in a caterpillar. The eggs take a certain amount of days to become strings. Er, maggots, if you will. If these eggs take 10 days to hatch and they were laid in a two day old caterpillar, then they caterpillar might be in the third instar when the larva hatches. If they are laid on a 10 day old caterpillar, the caterpillar may very well make it to chrysalis before the larva hatches.

I have also heard that the tachinid larva grows with the caterpillar, eating its insides and when the caterpillar makes its chrysalis, the tachinid larva then hatches. This would seem to be contradictory to what I wrote above.

I can tell you, unfortunatley, from personal experience that third instar caterpillars can have maggots emerge from them. And that concludes tonights bedtime story.

Cathy,

I don't bring in caterpillars any longer. I agree that collecting the eggs is a LOT harder on the back (and I already have enough problems with my back) but Tachinid Flies just are disgusting critters to observe. I do make an attempt and have taught DH what to look for so we kill them when we see 'em out in the yard to sort of do the 'preventative,' if you will, as much as possible. This has helped to cut down on the parasitism.

I have learned that I do not put my pupae into pop-ups until they are almost ready to eclose. This gives me a chance to observe what is taking place. I can watch for any 'strange' changes occurring and then destroy the pupae if indeed, parasitism has occurred OR any other 'issue' such as OE or whatever. This has also helped to cut back on problems with unhealthy butterflies and the spread of disease.

On my blog I have put up some pictures of the Tachinid Fly (a young one-I went ahead and let the !@##$ hatch, then I killed it-I also found a live one then killed that one) from a parasitized Monarch.

Here is a link that might be useful: tdogmom's blog

Gwynne, Thanks. I'm sorry too. :( I feel bad that I just couldn't keep up with things and try to keep my sanity so I backed off and that's what happened. My husband says I act like I have to save every Monarch in the world. I do try to save all of them that I can, but then it just gets to be too much.

I am convinced now more than ever of the parasite problems that Monarchs face. I think probably almost every one of the caterpillars and pupas that didn't make it had strings hanging down from them. I saw the fly pupa on the bottom of the containers. I'm just now coming to an end of having those problems because I'm strictly bringing in eggs and that's absolutely it. I figure if I see a caterpillar, chances are one of its enemies probably spotted it before I did and already laid eggs on it, so I don't even bother bringing any in.

I'm finding less eggs these days than I had been. My biggest day I had this summer was 93 found eggs, but now when I got out it's more like 10-20. So I can tell the season is kind of winding down. I supposed I'll be releasing butterflies a month from now yet or probably even into October (only a few). My biggest release day was 29 butterflies on August 18 (a week ago today). Mostly all of those eclosed in my butterfly cage.

I didn't keep track of how many dead caterpillars and pupas I had from when I brought them in as caterpillars when I was getting back into raising them, but I'd guess that it was 30 or so that didn't make it. Of the ones that I collected outside as caterpillars, far more died than what lived. Probably the ones that lived were the founds I found as tiny caterpillars before anything had a chance to find them. The ones in the butterfly cage were collected as eggs. We put 109 caterpillars in the cage; only two didn't make it. So I think that says a lot about how much better their chances are when they're collected as eggs and raised inside.

Last year I didn't collect eggs at all. I was a novice and only collected the caterpillars. It's a wonder many of them made it, but I successfully raised 70 Monarch cats. I think I only had about 8 that didn't make it last year. So I think their parasites are a lot worse this year.

Yes, I agree with you about the tachinid flies being disgusting. Sorry about your problems that you had before. I guess we probably all go through those things unfortunately, but at least now we know how bad the problem really is. I don't get rid or normal-looking larva, but if I see a pupa that looks funny, I do dispose of it because I know that either it will result in flies or else the butterfly will be deformed when it ecloses.

Thanks for all the information. It was really interesting and now I've learned even more.

Sherry,
I absolutely agree with you about not bringing in caterpillars. If I ever take a break again, like back off from collecting eggs for a week or two each year. I found out from collecting caterpillars outside that very few of them make it. I've been taking my pain pills lately and it's not quite so hard on my back collecting the eggs, but it's still not pain-free. Oh, how I wish I had gotten into this when I was younger, but then again, I had kids, so that took up my time and I wouldn't have had the time to spare. Ha, even now I wonder how I'd do it if I'd get more eggs than I've already been getting. It's time-consuming, no doubt about it. I've been trying to put a bunch in small storage containers thinking maybe that would save time. I'm not sure if it saves that much. There's just no real easy way to do this without putting most of my waking hours into it. I spend more time with the caterpillars than I do my family.

Yes, those Tachinid flies are definitely disgusting. If I see any outside when I'm out there, I'll whoop their hairy little butts. :) Btw, I enjoyed reading about them in your blog just as I've loved reading everything else you have on there. You have really good information! How many years have you been raising Monarchs now?

Like you, I watch the pupae closely and if any start having a strange look, they get isolated. I have one right now that I'm wondering about. It's not that it doesn't look healthy. It has a nice plump look, but its stripes don't have the usual look. There's a criss-cross type pattern on part of it. I took a few pictures of it and will post them when my daughter gets them off of her camera and onto the computer.

I bet that about had your blood boiling to let the Tachinid Fly hatch. ;-)

Cathy

Cathy,

Hey, I had physical therapy this morning for MY back...so I can totally empathize. Arthritis, degenerative disk disorder, age, ruptured disks, you name it! Been there. I LOOK good but boy, my body is in worse shape internally than my hubby's and he's older than me!!! tee-hee

I've been raising butterflies for several years now but, like you said, spend a LOT of time with and on them. Hours upon hours upon hours. I've now learned methods that work best for me and I try to tell people that they have to find a method that works for THEM. Each person is different and what works for one may not work for someone else. The good thing is that sharing our experiences provides ideas that are good to try, right? Then, you can modify until you find what works for you.

For example, the idea of taking the eggs OFF the leaves is a new one for me this year. It took me some 'play time' and a sleepless night before I thought to try those plastic toothpick thingies which I've found are the best! Plus, I had all those darned things that just didn't work as dental flossers anyway so it was a great way to recycle them. :) Now, to just get a decent picture of it on my blog...maybe I can talk hubby into taking a picture of me 'doing' it. I should probably get out my digicam and make a video...

Tachinid Flies? YUCK! I've let those !@#$ hatch a few times but this last time was the first time I actually took their pictures. The other dead guys are in bug cups at my classroom-I use them in my presentations and to show the Kindergartners. They make GREAT specimens when we sing the song, "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...I don't know why she swallowed a fly..." tee-hee! Those hairy booties just gross out the kids to no end. :)

CalSherry aka tdogmom

Sherry, Geez, you and I sound a lot alike with our backs! Yesterday it was so bad that I ended up taking 3 tylenol with codeine. I had such trouble moving without having pain, so I think I know what you're going through since I have the same things happening to me...not fun. :(

Ha, yeah, I can also relate to spending hours upon hours upon hours doing things Monarch related. I'm either feeding them, gathering leaves, gathering eggs, planting milkweed, cleaning containers, getting rid of dead ones, dumping out poop, releasing them (that's the fun part), and more. It's a fulltime job. Since we've been having a drought, I've had to spend a lot of my time watering plants too. I wouldn't be doing all of this if I didn't love the Monarchs so much. I just love to watch them gliding around in the yard like they're so carefree. They just seem different than other butterflies. I like others too, but there's just something about Monarchs that gets to me. Oh, and they LOVE that tropical milkweed! :-)

I haven't worked my way up to taking the eggs off of the leaves yet, maybe next year. Haha. I have to take baby steps. It would save on the leaves, I know that. That's great that you found out those methods of safely removing them from the leaves. I would love to see a video of you taking the eggs off of the leaves. I'm afraid that I'd damage them and would probably need to see exactly how you do it before I'd work up the nerve to do that.

Yes, Tachinid Flies are the pits! Ha, that's funny that they serve as specimens when you and the kindergartners sing that song. Can you imagine actually swallowing those things?! YUCK!

Cathy

Well, I have the most beautiful patches of milkweed this year that one has ever seen! Nice, beautiful, big leaves, and great flowers. I have seed pods everywhere. The only thing I don't have - MONARCHS!

My last batch died - probably a disease because I didn't see anything hatch from them. They just curled up and died. Not going to raise any this year because I don't want to promote any kind of disease for someone else to deal with.

So, my perennial milkweeds will be ready to come up (early, I hope) next year, and I'll have lots of seed for next year, too.

I have plenty of other cats I'm raising, so I'm not really that disappointed. I don't have very good luck with bringing in eggs. It seems more difficult to me that bringing in the babies. So, we'll just chock this year up to dismal cat failure in regard to Monarchs and viral disease, and look forward to next year.

Susan

Susan, I'm really sorry to hear about your Monarch cats dying. I can't say that I had any disease here. At first I thought there was one because I had so many die on a big plastic storage container that I was keeping them in, but I had collected all or mostly all of them outside as caterpillars, so I think they had already been parasitized. I was so busy and didn't even think at the time to check for pupae on the bottom. They would have all gotten destroyed anyway when I dumped all the casualties to be burned. Now that I've been collecting the eggs again, I am having a lot of success. To date I've released 83 males, 89 females, and 7 unknown for a total of 179. The 7 unknowns are from the day when I was here by myself and had to release 29 Monarchs (my biggest day yet at that) and they were all pushing in line to be let out of the cage and there was no easy way of doing it and being able to tell what they all were before they took off for the skies, so some went without getting ID'd.

That's great that your milkweed is doing so well. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they come up early next year for you and maybe you'll get Monarchs a lot sooner. I don't know how that works when you live where you are. I remember reading other people saying that they don't get them until the fall migration, so I don't understand how it all works. All I know is that mine were over a month early this year from last year and I didn't have the cage completely done so took some shortcuts and regretted it and now have to remodel it.

I think it's neat how you get to raise so many different kinds of cats. I'm starting to think all that I'll have is Monarchs, but that's okay since they keep me plenty busy anyway. I have planted plants for other kinds of butterflies especially for the BST's but I didn't have any luck except I had one egg laid here and something got to it before I could even get it an hour later.

I hope next year is a better one for you and others that haven't had luck with the Monarchs. It's been very wet for you and very dry for me with the weather and who knows how that affects things.

Cathy

Cathy, last year I did an experiment of sorts. In September, I went to a field that had lots of milkweed. It had been mowed in the begininng or middle of the summer, so it had the only usable milkweed in the area that I new about. All the other milkweed was yellow and had lots of bugs.

Anyway, I went caterpillar hunting. Came away with 50 plus caterpillars from first instar through fifth instar. Went back a day or two later and found 40 more caterpillars.

There were lots of casualties due to tachinid flies. One thing I noticed were that third instars were trying to pupate and died. Most of those had tachinid flies coming out of them.

Out of the group of 90, I believe that about 40 or 45 did in fact become butterflies. That is why I do still take in caterpillars. Now mind you, just because I did, doesnt mean you should do something that makes you uncomfortable. It seems like you had a very high percentage that were parasited and Tdogmom has been doing this for years and she wont touch the older ones. I dont even know if I would do something like collect that many again.

Hats off to you for all the butterflies you raised this summer. I have released about 20 or 30 monarch butterflies this year. I found it too time consuming last year. I was spending hours a day finding food, cleaning it, feeding the caterpillars. Plus I was getting a lot of diseased butterflies. So I have really cut back my numbers drastically this year.

I am concentrating more on my garden, raising BSTs, and I sent away for GFs and GSTs. I am finding BST eggs and caterpillars in my garden which is a shock because I never see any butterflies there!

I could never accomplish what you did this year and that is something to be pround of. But remember, you cant save them all and if you try to take on too many, you will get so burned out you wont be able to save any.

Gwynne, Yes, though Tachinid Flies are ridiculous, huh. It sounds like you know firsthand from last year how time-consuming this can be. I found out last year too and thought by switching methods this year I could save time. I still think the cage idea is the best thing and the cats can simply eat their way through all of the plants. I had so many cats in there (over 100) that it took little more than a week for them to strip 25 milkweed plants in three-gallon pots. The very last ones should eclose today and I take the cage apart and store it until next year when I want to make some changes on it to make it easier to get in and out of. Keeping the cats in the cage is still my first choice in method of raising the cats.

I do take in small cats that I happen to find outside because I still hope that they haven't been attacked by a Tachinid Fly or Brachonid Wasp (the flies are the main problem here). Since I do keep groups of cats together, I have no way of knowing which ones I brought in as small cats and which I brought in as eggs, but when I see the strings hanging down from the cats or pupas, I can pretty much guess. I wish I could keep track of which ones I brought in at which stage just out of curiosity, but since I already put so much time into raising them, I decided that's out of the question. I think my hubby and daughter would be visiting me at the funny farm if I raised each cat by itself from egg to butterfly. ;-)

That's good that you did get a lot of butterflies out of the cats that you collected last year. I'm sure it was a lot of work. I know I couldn't do this year round or I'd never get anything else done. Hubby's even gotten in on the act now too and likes to release the butterflies. He looks at all the cats for me and makes sure that the ones that look like they'll come out the next day are in the front to be released. He and my daughter are actually the ones who've been releasing mostly all of them since they get out of bed before I do. I got myself on such a weird schedule staying up late taking care of cats that I'm too tired to get up and let them go when they're ready, so I have helpers to do that for me. :)

I think it's great that your released 20 or 30 Monarch cats this year. It's probably that many that wouldn't have made it on their own otherwise or a lot of them anyway. I don't blame you one bit for cutting back on how many you bring it. I'd like to raise other kinds sometime too and will wait until I get them here, but I might end up buying some if I don't have them, say, 5 years from now. I'm not real young anymore and don't won't to be waiting around forever to get them. I want to wait awhile though and be surprised. :)

Thanks, and if I'd have a fulltime regular job, I wouldn't have been able to raise all of these cats, so that is a major factor. My housekeeping definitely has gone out the window for the summer. Ha. I try to save all that I can, but if I have that overwhelmed feeling again, I'll have to back off again, but since I'll be finding fewer cats from now on, I think I've seen the "worst" of it for the year. I don't expect to be getting more than I can handle from now on and just my sending a lot of eggs out to someone today will give me somewhat of a break and give her and her students a rewarding experience. I think that the students will have a lot of good memories from it and may raise Monarch cats someday themselves.

Cathy

I guess it is different for you as you have milk weed plants in your yard and feel obligated to search them and protect the eggs and caterpillars that you find.

I only go to the milkweed patches for food. Okay, at the beginning of the summer I did go out egg hunting many times before I found the first eggs.

Even bringing in a limited number got to be overwhelming. Every time that I would go out for food I would find more eggs and little caterpillars on the milkweed that I would then have to raise.

Right now, I have six monarch chrysalises and about 16 caterpillars. I did have a chrysalis, the third one of the summer, go bad yesterday. I too worry that the others with it will go bad. I had two go bad in another cage but the rest were fine.

Yes, I know about tachinid flies, unfortunately, first hand. They are pretty disgusting but I just try to remind myself that it isnt contagious to the other chrysalises.

I had my first brachonid wasp yesterday. It came out of a BST chrysalis. I must say, much easier to deal with than the flies though I wish neither would go after the caterpillars.

Do you ever feel you are missing out by not getting to see the butterflies eclose and releasing them? I feel that way a lot. I put so much work into it and then I go home and release the butterflies and barely get to admire their beauty. One week I did bring my cage to work and saw several monarchs and BSTs eclose.

Gwen, Yeah, I think that's why I feel like I have to save every one of them, because the plant are in my yard. I'm so glad that I found a person in PA who would take some eggs because the pressure eases up a bit. With the 68 that I sent her today, I think I've given her close to 150 eggs. She and her daughters have been raising them, and now she's going to take this batch of eggs into her classroom and she and her students will raise them. I'm relieved to know that they'll be well taken care of and also relieved that I don't have to raise them. lol Really, I have enough right now again. Now that I've been collecting mostly eggs, I've been having better results, with only an occasional one dying instead of most of them.

You're wise to not take in more than you feel you can handle. I don't have that overwhelmed feeling that I had before because giving those eggs away helped out and I also have a pretty good system going. Last year I felt totally lost as far as knowing what I was doing and got more confident as more and more were released successfully. This year with all of the plants that I have I got so inundated with eggs that I felt beside myself not knowing where I was going to go with them all, how I'd feed them all, and how I'd find the time to raise them all.

It's not like I don't ever get to see any butterflies eclose and release them. Just today I released 2 males and 3 females. My daughter went back to college and my husband leaves here at 8:00 AM, so now it's entirely up to me to release them. I'm glad that I'm helping this part of nature, but I do feel kind of sad because I feel like I missed most of the summer. I didn't get all of the things done that I wanted to get done because there are only so many hours in a day and the Monarchs took up most of them. I guess I feel like I have to do everything. My husband says I always "overbook" myself. I can relate to what you're saying about putting so much work into it that I don't get to admire their beauty. I put out a lot of different kinds of plants, nectar and host, for a variety of butterflies. Because my garden is so much bigger this year than last year, more weeding and deadheading is required than before. I can't just leisurely go *snip snip snip* and enjoy looking at things while I'm doing the deadheading. I feel like I'm running a race because I know that there are other things that need tending. I have a dozen cosmos 'sensations' that are still sitting in cups that never got planted. I have no idea if they ever will get planted. I have 2 dozen plants of ornamental grass that I would like to plant yet. I have newspapers and mulch to put around in the garden and take out landscape fabric that I put in last year and the year before thinking that I was doing the right thing. I have butterfly bushes to plant. I still have to dig sod where I want to plant some Black-eyed Susans that I have in pots. My swamp milkweed bed consists of 100 plants (5 rows of 20) and is about 20' x 40' and since it would cost a lot to have mulch delivered, I'm just going to lay down cardboard boxes to keep the weeds down. I could go on and on. I just have lots of things to get done and I feel the summer slipping away, yet I feel like I have to keep putting in the time with the Monarchs. Arg. I think I'll go to bed because it's late and I have to get up before I want to and start in on another day.

I gathered enough milkweed last week for six days. I only found one caterpillar that I felt I had to bring in. When I went to get more milkweed yesterday, I did end up with six eggs. I got enough milkweed to last for several days, hopefully for close to a week, so it isnt as bad as going out every day and getting fresh food and finding more eggs. I kept a journal last year and after a couple of weeks, it was really starting to look like an Edgar Allan Poe story. You could almost trace my descent into madness as I tried to care for these caterpillars that just would not stop eating! It is a little hard for me this year with four different types of caterpillars. I raised monarchs and BSTs last year and this year got GFs and GSTs from Shady Oak. I dont mind at night, but in the morning I am just rushing around! The monarchs always seem to take the longest for some reason. I still will be sad to see them head south for the winter.