How long does it take for the caterpillas to go into their cacoons!We have so many of them and the poor Swan Pant is getting eaten and I'm worried that theres going to be no plant left.Also there are baby ones still growing. any advice on what to do would be fantastic thankyou.
trouty63,
Jan 11, 5:39pm
Sorry, but you might just have to pick the wee caterpillars off and squash them. You could try feeding them on pumpkin maybe!
mottly,
Jan 11, 5:42pm
I just leave them to it - the wasps will come in and clean them out.if you 'cull', you can quite easily end up with none at all. The wasps are getting very hungry I noticed :(
..pip..,
Jan 11, 6:14pm
The butterfly always lay more eggs than the plant can support, it's just the way it works.
dibble35,
Jan 11, 7:13pm
I went thru this very recently, i culled the eggs first, then the small caterpillars, even then the bigger ones ran out of food towards the end. Luckily they were big enough they could live off of thinly sliced pumkin and zucchini for their last few days. I had one smaller one left that i somehow missed, luckily I had some small swan plants that I found at work that were just starting to resprout. I put it on these and it managed for the next few days, then when food was running low again i thought i'd give it some pumpkin /zucchini to eat, well it must have been just a bit to small to cope with it, found it the next day dead. I've heard mixed stories about feeding them on pumpkin/zucchini/cucumber but from my personal experiance they have to be quite big and only afew days away from becoming chrysilis's to survive. I've got 11 chrysilis's waiting to 'hatch' YAY
davea74,
Jan 11, 7:27pm
LOL made that mistake last year with the kids and a single swan plant.Didn't know about culling the eggs and spent about 50 bucks on swanplants until all the caterpillers changed!Ended up with about 7 or 8 dead, completely eaten swanplants, heaps of butterflies and 2 very happy kids!
This year - no swan plants.
gyrogearloose,
Jan 11, 7:52pm
Stop worrying about the life and death of Monarchs, and just relax.
junie2,
Jan 11, 7:57pm
I have the opposite problem, OP. I have lots of plant. If you can get some of your caterpillars to Chch I'd be happy to look after them.
ruby2shoes,
Jan 11, 8:14pm
if you know of ppl with plants and no caterpillars in your area, you can put branches of plants in jar of water (scrunch up newspaper and put in top of jar so caterpillars that fall don't drown) and keep them in a spare room.Definitely squish any eggs.
oh_hunnihunni,
Jan 11, 8:15pm
It pays to keep a couple of plants under curtain net to keep the adults off them - as emergency spares. If the plants get stripped out badly there isn't time for them to come back before the pillars need to change.
dagon1,
Jan 11, 8:27pm
i bought 2 palnts but got told by mother in law to not let any on it when you see them kill them so the plants can get to a decent size so they have lots to eat .so each day out i go picking them off .even got the kids helping :)
hannibalcat,
Jan 11, 8:35pm
I had four plants brought another four during the week and have just been out to grab another 7 today minus the caterpillars I put them onto the shops plants again (and the guy threw in another 3 from last year).The caterpillars are munching thru them the last few days.
The lady at the garden centre yesterday told me to try butternut pumpkin around the bottom of the plants.I didn't know that they would eat courgettes.
One escaped last night and was crawling over the cabbage pretty sure it had a good munch on that before I put it back on the plant.
dibble35,
Jan 11, 9:14pm
I think its basically any pumpkin, mine were munching on regular gray pumpkin,and they liked the courgette to. they're like little temporary pets, cant wait till they hatch.and for my plants to recover enough to have more caterpillars, have 10 plants under net curtain as reserves an d 3 out for b.flies to lay next lot of eggs on
hannibalcat,
Jan 12, 3:31am
Three escapees tonight - two up the fence and one on the cabbage again argh hope they don't venture far tonight.
oh_hunnihunni,
Jan 12, 2:26pm
They wiill eat alternatives but it interferes with their changing, so it's best to keep milkweed available. And they are eating machines so will test other plants. As for wandering, they do that when it's time to find a good hanging place.
mottly,
Jan 12, 5:11pm
pumpkin etc is a bit of a BS fad - many times they will just die, or end up like mutants. Just let them do their own thing - interferring is worse for them in the long run.
Yup, that's what we do. The three plant plan. We have 3 plants, keep two under windnet or similar, caterpillars on the first plant, when that's gone, give them the second, cover the first, gives it time to regenerate. When they eat that, uncover the third, cover up second. By the time they finish that, the first has new leaves on it. But we do take the eggs off the plants when they reach capacity. Have 6 munchers of various sizes on the plant at the moment, and that's enough.
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