Very Hungry Caterpillars

This past week, our Monarch butterfly eggs have hatched on our Milkweed plants and we've been exploring them the past few days. They are definately hungry! We're keeping one Milkweed plant in our house by the windowsill and I'd say we have around 15 baby caterpillars on it just eating away the leaves. As they get bigger, they eat more and more, so we have two more plants out back to transfer them to once they've eaten this plant. We kept them outside last year and then have also tried them in a container just changing out the leaves and I would definately recommend not doing those. A storm killed most of them when they were outside and keeping them inside in a container was just too much hastle. This seems to work great and they don't leave the plant. We just water it every other day and watch and observe. As they get ready to form crysalises, we'll transfer the plant out into our butterfly house where they can crawl up the wood and then change into beautiful Monarch butterflies. We'll then hang a baby food jar with a sponge attached and fill it with Gatorade (they like the purple kind..."Fierce" the best) and then eventually let them go into the wild to make more butterflies. Give it a try this spring. It's great fun!

*If you're really interested in getting started, just take a trip to Home Depot or Lowe's, look at their milkweed plants in the garden section and look for little, cream eggs on the underside of the leaves. If you see some, buy the plant and happy hatching! If you live up north and it's still cold outside, just keep the plant inside on your widowsill like we're doing and then transfer them to your homemade butterfly pavillion. Click HERE for directions on how to make your own (we made one for Avonlea's room and she chose pink tool and some sticky gems to decorate it...turned out pretty cute).