The Monarch babies aren’t babies anymore, they’re in what looks to be the fourth instar (of five), growing significantly every day. It’s remarkable how much they grow every day, but that growth is apparent when you see how much they eat and how much…excrement…they produce:
Raising Monarchs requires a good supply of milkweed plants. If you didn’t have some in your back yard like I do you’d be making a road trip daily to find some leaves to freshen up their larder. For me, there are enough new plants coming up where I don’t necessarily want them (say, the lawn) I’m able to pull up the entire plant, taproot and all, and wrap the end in moist paper towel and a covering of plastic film. The leaves wilt fairly quickly even with that wrap as you can see in the picture above which has plant material that is about 24 hours old. Since the little tykes get their liquid from the leaves I would surmise that fresher is better.
I’m feeling much more confident about being able to raise these two to maturity now that they’re a much more significant size. The tiny first instar sizes made me nervous that they could get hurt easily just by me transferring them to a new food plant, even though I was moving the entire old leaf they were on.
It has been 10 days since they emerged and since two weeks is the typical caterpillar stage I’m expecting that I’ll find them hanging upside down from the top of the cage forming a chrysalis at some point in the next couple of days. I’ve secured some cardboard to the top of the cage that I can easily remove so I’ll be able to take them outside when they’re ready to emerge as an adult. Disaster if I miss the emergence and find them flying around the house! Since the chrysalis becomes transparent and the gorgeous wing colors show through I’m not expecting any difficulties, but as noted before I don’t think I’ll be at ease until they fly the coop.
