06-12-2012, 02:51 AM
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#5 |
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Originally Posted by LyzzaRyzz  Wow!
Where do you get your moths/butterflies?
I absolutely love butterflies. and there are some moths out there that look better than butterflies!
My parents went to Aruba, and theres this butterfly sanctuary they went to. Apparently there are these lizzards, all over the island, and they eat the butterflies, but not the wings. So, all over the sanctuary, there are bright, colorful wings all over the ground! A lady was cleaning up the wings, andmy mom asked if she could have them...and the lady gave em to her! She took em home to Rhode Island, and we laminated them...They are so beautiful!
We always have monarchs that lay eggs in our backyard..we have milk weeds all over to encourage them to come see us! | The Silk moths come from here. Everything there is harmless except the Io Moth which has true stinging caterpillar. The monarch eggs I collect from outside as they are easy to find and have a pretty sad survival rate out there anyway. Raising the moths is a bit harder then monarchs. Especially when they first hatch they need humidity not too low or too high. You always have a pretty good die off at the beginning for various reasons. A significant percent for example will refuse to take to the offered host plant.
I personally like the caterpillars more then the adult moths. The adult moths are very pretty but they lack the amusing weirdness of the caterpillars. The cecropia cats will make the monarch cats look very drab in a few weeks 
Some people love handling the moths others won't be in the same room with them if their cage is open lol. The adult moths end up various places. The ones I keep I tend to give away to my university if they are decent shape when they die. Some get set free others I give live to school teachers and so on depending how many I have. Same with the caterpillars, I give out some eggs, but I prefer raising the caterpillars till they are a few weeks old as their chances are much much better that way. They are very low maintenance for the most part. I keep mine in plastic containers/bins. They start out in little ziplock containers and move up to a 10 gallon storage bin. Towards the end of the caterpillar stage the cecropias do require large amounts of food and produce an equally large amount of waste. Its best to replace their food and washout the bin every other day at that stage. Typical caterpillar keeper is seen often on walks mauling trees  |
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