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Butterfly Garden

Question about Raising Monarchs

13 years ago

A friend of mine gave me some monarch butterfly eggs on some tropical milkweed. Many of the eggs have hatched and are quickly growing. I placed some Asclepias tuberosa in their enclosure to keep them well supplied with fresh food, but they insist on staying on the tropical milkweed. Eating every last morsel. They will climb on the A. tuberosa but I haven't seen them so much as nibble on it. They will use A. tuberosa as a host plant as well right?

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden and caterpillars

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Comments (4)

ericwi
13 years ago
Monarch cats will transition from one species of milkweed to another, but it might take several hours. Mine seem to prefer A. incarnata over A.tuberosa.
terrene
13 years ago
I'm raising about 50 Monarchs this year, and because I don't have enough of any one species of Asclepias to feed all of them, I am offering them cuttings of 2 or 3 species when they are small (A. incarnata, A. syriaca, or A. curassavica) and eventually they seems to adapt and eat all of them.

A. tuberosa is the least favorite. I tried feeding some to the larger cats, but the leaves were pretty drought stricken and not even the hungry 5th instar cats ate much. Do you have any other type of milkweed? If that's all you have and you are trying to transition the baby cats, then I would pick the smallest and most tender leaves possible.
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bananasinohio
13 years ago
We had a long discussion about A. tuberosa last year. Maybe someone can link it. Basically (and crudely), in order to achieve the same amount of calories, the caterpillars have to eat almost twice as much A. tuberosa as some of the other species. It is a very dry plant and they need more leaf water content to assimilate the nitrogen. They will eat it but reluctantly.

-Elisabeth
kr222
Original Author
13 years ago
Elisabeth. I found the link. I'll post it below. I'm kind of worried that all I have to feed them is A. tuberosa. I don't want them to starve. :( I did start another thread to ID what might be a variety of Asclepias. If you get a chance, please look and see. For now, I'll check the plant for younger foliage and see if they will be interested in that.

Here is a link that might be useful: A. tuberosa 2009 discussion

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