Thursday, July 12, 2018

Triumph and Tragedy part II


This has been a very sad and exhausting week for me, and my butterfly project.
As of my writing earlier this week, I believed that the cause of my caterpillars sickness was pesticide poisoning, now I believe it was NPV, which is virus that is fairly common in caterpillars, and can wipe out any critter that comes in contact with it.  I will not go into detail about it here, but I encourage you to look it up, and familiarize yourself with signs and symptoms if you are raising large numbers of caterpillars in captivity.
I ended up contacting the U of M Monarch lab, and here is what I learned....

 Raising large numbers of caterpillars in captivity can be deadly if too many are too close together.  It’s recommended that cats are kept in individual containers, or no more than 2-3 together, to minimize contamination if one becomes ill.
  Any caterpillar that shows any signs of illness, green goo, poor appetite, unexplained behavior (IE writhing as though in pain) should immediately be removed and isolated if not already.
 Anything that that caterpillar may have touched, enclosures, milkweed, other cats, even a handlers hands needs to be carefully sterilized before any further use.
 Also remove any Chrysalides that are in the enclosure as the adult butterfly can carry the virus, and spread it wherever it lands....YIKES!
NPV and other viruses are fairly common in caterpillar populations, and anyone that is raising large numbers of caterpillars should expect to deal with it at some point.


So I learned a very sad, hard lesson.  After having to freeze about 2 dozen caterpillars, including 3 that were in J’s and spending several hours disinfecting  three enclosures with bleach, and giving away about a dozen caterpillars to a fellow butterfly lady I hope I am past this crisis.  I am frustrated, and a little scared to start up operation again, but I will be much more careful in the future, and vigilant in my watch for any trouble.

So, will let you know what happens next!  Stay tuned.
#save the monarch


Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Triumph and tragedy July 10

A lot has happened in my Monarch quest since my last post!  I was out of town for 2 weekends over the holiday, and had to take my babies with me the first weekend, and leave them in the care of my capable daughter the second weekend.  The first weekend was spent with family in Iowa, where I spent time caterpillar/egg hunting with grand nephews and grand niece.  I came home with several additions to my menagerie.   The next weekend was spent at a cabin near Bemidji Mn, where I was also able to SAVE the Monarchs one caterpillar at a time!  I discovered a small clearing near our cabin that had recently been mowed, which sadly probably destroyed caterpillars and eggs, but there were many tiny plants beginning to grow back, and mama Monarch flitting from plant to plant laying her bounty.  There were eggs and baby caterpillars on nearly every plant.  Again I returned home to add to my ever growing caterpillar family!
Here's the tragedy part of the weekend; before we left I grabbed some milkweed from a spot I'd never picked before, and by Sunday afternoon I had 2 large cats that were vomiting up green goo (never a good thing)  I've written in past blogs about viruses and infections from wasps etc..... I really wasn't sure what was happening, and I euthanized 4 big caterpillars. So I turned to my Facebook group for advice, a couple people said it sounded like pesticide poisoning.  That hadn't occurred to me!  SO LESSON LEARNED....don't pick unfamiliar milkweed, even if it is nearby and easy to get to, AND you're never so experienced that you don't need help from others sometimes!  So, Monday AM bright and early I went to get fresh Milkweed, threw out all the stuff that was in my big enclosure, then moved the surviving cats to the fresh Milkweed and they almost immediately came back to life!  I still lost 3 more that I think were just to sick to recover, time will tell if the others will recover, but they seem to be acting and eating normally again!

Another first for me....I had a caterpillar that was on the side of my glass aquarium, and it looked like it was planning to try to spin it's Chrysalis there, I knew that the Chrysalis would be deformed on one side, so I pulled it off.  THE Caterpillar curled up on the bottom of the enclosure and I was sure I'd killed it, but nature (and the caterpillar) had other ideas, and much to my astonishment it spun on the bottom of the aquarium!  Yes, it's still deformed, but I didn't even know that was possible.  I hung it up, and so far it seems like it may develop normally.  Again, time will tell if it ecloses and is able to fly, I'll report on that next blog! To be continued.....
Eggs saved from my neighbors yard
5 huge boquets of milkweed saved from certain destruction!
One more triumph....
There is a house in my neighborhood that has milkweed in their yard. ...a lot of milkweed!  Last year at the end of July they cut it down, and I drove by one day and it was all in the trash!  I almost stopped and knocked on their door, but didn't ..... fast forward to this year, I watched those milkweed begin to grow again.  This time when they cut them down again in early June I stopped and pleaded with them to not cut them mid season. I saved 7 5th in star cats out of the destroyed pile of dead milkweed,  3 weeks later, end of June, they cut them again, so today (July 10) I stopped again, knocked on the door and asked if I could pull it for them, before they could weedwack it again.   I saved 35 eggs, 3 large cats, and 16 babies!

So it's been a very busy week of triumphs and tragedy in my caterpillar kingdom.  I may be in over my head with trying to SAVE all these caterpillars, but I'll do my best to give them a better shot at surviving then I believe they would have had otherwise.  So as always I continue to SAVE the Monarch

Sunday, July 1, 2018

July 1. Update

We are only a month or so into the season and I have already raised and released nearly 50 butterflies!  There was a few days that I didn't find anything as the first generation (in Minnesota) were busy mating and laying eggs, now I expect to find many more in the next two months as we head toward the Super Monarch generation that will migrate south to Mexico.

Last year I had only released 2 butterflies by now, and a total of 75.  This year I'm expecting to triple that number! 

A few people have asked me about tagging. Tagging begins mid to late August. Remember the current butterflies mate, lay eggs and die, so tagging them now does not serve any real purpose except to see if my released butterflies return to my own yard to lay eggs.   Even then the odds of me seeing the female laying eggs in my garden is slim.   So right now the significance of my releasing 50 plus healthy adults (almost 75% female) is that there are that many monarchs out there reproducing.   So I continue to believe that those of us that are back yard scientists, just out there raising Monarchs in a safe environment are adding numbers to the population and making a difference to SAVE the Monarchs!!  So keep up the good work. If this year is any indication the numbers are up and our efforts are helping.

#SavetheMonarch