Does anyone know anything about rearing butterflies?

[hereidrawtheline]

I feel a sense of outrage coming on from those in my life who think 10 animals, DH and DS are enough... but I love butterflies and am fascinated by them. Have been thinking about raising some. What do you know?

I know nothing, but your thread title made me .

Lovely thing to do.

I have raised them from eggs with school children. We kept them in a large sweet jar with perforated foil over the top and fed them on cabbage leaves. They stank and pooped loads. Cabbage whites. I sent off for them.
But you can get kits from catalogues like um is it Great little trading co? with special net containers for them.

Letterbox

well I was thinking perhaps there is a more "grown up" world of butterfly rearing... I have found with the animals I have now that there are often versions of things for children that are more expensive than proper "adult" equipment. I have seen this site which has some really nice looking stuff but a friend on another forum found this which I am reading now and seems to open up a whole world!

Glad it made you smile nickytwotimes why not, eh?

thank you

this seems to be where you order the caterpillars from

We ordered some for DDs nursery last year. They got lost in the post and so they sent them again, they took ages to arrive and had hatched out by time they got here. Most had died tho.
I think we had about 4 that made it to big caterpillar size but it was late in the season by then and they turned into crysallisis (sp) and ....never hatched out.
I was hoping they would come out in the spring but it doesn't look like they are going to....
Good luck...

Wow they look great.

Shitemum do you remember where you ordered those from?

I want this book as a good beginners but look at this page I bet some of these illustrations are gorgeous! scroll down a bit...

ds was given one of the kits last year where you send off for the caterpillars etc. He LOVED it ... he watched them eat their food, turn into chrysallis and eventually turn into butterflies ... would recommend it to anyone!

did you release them in the end?

yes .. it only seemed fair ... kept them a day or two after they turned - when ds sees a butterfly in the garden he still says that it is one of his!

oh thats lovely! very encouraging!

will try and remember...am in Spain but the darned things were sent all the way from Germany which seemed ridiculous considering there are plenty of cabbage whites here