Last summer my husband got two cecropia moth caterpillars from the bushes near his work. We put them in our butterfly cage to see if we could get them to make their cocoons. Not too many days later, they were in cocoons! These caterpillars are huge!
After spinning a cocoon, they overwinter in this state and then emerge in late May or early June. We also found one of these cocoons out hiking in late winter and put the stick it was on in our butterfly cage.
A few weeks ago, the one that we had found as a cocoon emerged. It ended up having its wings get battered in the wind but it was a female and it attracted a mate by the scent it sends out. We found them mating and put them in our cage.
About a day later we had probably around 100 cecropia moth eggs in our cage! About 10 days later they hatched so we've been raising cecropia caterpillars. They eat both lilacs and apple tree leaves. They have changed from being all black to yellow and black. It's really cool to watch them!
Our latest excitement was that one of the caterpillars that we had found last summer emerged just last Saturday from it's cocoon! We had kind of given up on them emerging, but we came home to find a moth sitting there! We set it free and for some odd reason a couple days later we found it had laid eggs on our trellis by our deck. So we may be rescuing more caterpillars and putting them on a host plant!
If you ever get a chance to raise caterpillars, it's a WONDERFUL thing to do! We raise monarch caterpillars each summer as well. Maybe I'll do some pics of them sometime. They're very easy and fun to raise! We currently have about 10 monarch caterpillars of different size that we're feeding and raising! How fun for the kids to observe the amazing creatures that God has made!
They are beautiful! The closest I ever got to that was as a child raising silkworms...... we visited Scotland and got to go to a Butterfly and Insect World. It was fascinating. We are creepy-crawly folk I guess..... :-)
That is a lot of caterpillars to feed! I'm sure the kids are having a fantastic time. Don't you love homeschooling? We get to do all of these cool things and say it is for the children! And I love the pictures in your last post. Your daughter certainly looks like you! Your aunt will treasure those photos of now and then.
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• Tue 12 Jun 2007 - wow
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