NPvirus

Its been an interesting week!  I have had beautiful healthy butterflies hatch every day this week.  The highlight was 4 females all on Wednesday!  Eggs, and caterpillars remain abundant this year.

That's all good news!!  Bad news this week, I learned about, and experienced first hand what I believe is called NPvirus...NPV.  I noticed one of my largest cats this AM dangling lifelessly from a chewed leaf, with a green substance on the paper towels beneath it.  So I visited the expert that I have mentioned many times (Rich Lund)  mrlundscience sure enough he had experienced a similar episode, and his information was informative, and discouraging!!  I removed all my caterpillars from big enclosure, and it will need to be sterilized with a bleach solution.  I am hoping I will not have to euthanize any more of my large cats!  I will monitor them closely until they do their thing!  The good news is that most of my caterpillars are already in Chrysalides, so I think they are safe!  I hope they are safe!!  There were only 4 or 5 big ones that were potentially exposed to the virus.  I have about 15-20 that are still too small to release into the big enclosure, so I think they are all safe, as long as I don't have another outbreak! yuk

So that's the news from the caterpillar world.  If you are following this blog, and are raising your own caterpillars/Monarchs please visit mrlundscience You-tube videos to learn more about these threats to our Monarchs!!  The last generation of the season is here.  They are the super Monarchs that will go to Mexico.  The more healthy butterflies that we release, the more hope there will be for next year's season to be a repeat of this year!!  We need several years in a row like this year in order to revive the species!!  Keep up the good work.

Save the MONARCH!