I believe light also adds to the mix as well. I have my hatchery lights on a 14 hour on an ten hour off cycle and I'm hatching out monarchs in les than seven days. Not sure what else could cause the early development. If that is the case less light exposure may be the link to slower develpoment. Just a guess on my part.... hey kid

The monarch usually emerges from its chrysalis in 10 to 14 days. The chrysalis will become very transparent and you can see the black and orange wings inside. That's when you know it's getting close to emerging. I have a video on my blog of one of my monarchs emerging. My Blog

Doesn't look good to me either--I last a few chrysalides this year to OE, and not just ones I brought inside. I found ones outside too that had been afflicted. If it's worse today and getting mushy, I would remove the chrysalis and put it in the freezer for a couple of days (wrapped up) and then flush it. Tdogmom's blog has info on this. You can do a search for her blog and threads will come up that have the link to her blog. In fact, the recent thread titled "What do you see in this photo" has a link to the blog. Sorry about your chrysalis. :(

Release it! It will be OK. It will find a leaf to take shelter under if it rains. You can see if it will take some sugar water before it goes. Mix 4 parts water to one part sugar. Bring to a boil and let cool. You can soak a paper towel or use one of the plastic scrubbers. If the Monarch doesn't know what to do. Place it on the crumpled paper towel (on a saucer) so the legs touch the sugar water--tasters are in feet! And if it doesn't unroll the proboscis, use a toothpick to gently unroll it so it touches the towel. You are holding it gently but firmly, close to the body while you are doing this. Hope this makes sense. I wrote this out in a hurry as I'm off to practice being a volunteer naturalist.