My journey with the monarchs: No. 3

Before we go on, remember how I said I might forget something?

Yep, forgot something really important about the milkweed last week.

Have you have ever broken a leaf off of a milkweed plant and seen a milky white substance 

 ooze from where it had been attached? It's a latex that contains alkaloids and other complexes

including cardenolides. It's a form of steroid (and cardiac arrester) and it IS what makes the caterpillar

and the monarch butterfly poisonous to their predators. The fact that they have the coloring they do in the larval stage and as a butterfly is so that they warn their predators that they will not taste very good. You should not put this plant where pets might eat it as it would make them sick or worse. And you should always take care not to get the latex on your skin and definitely not in your eyes. I'm constantly washing my hands after handling the plant and go through a lot of hand soap in my house! And, when you purchase your milkweed, you need to make sure that it has not been sprayed with pesticide! And for the record, I thought I should add that milkweed is NOT a weed, but a perennial herb.

Mammas got eggs:

A female monarch can lay about 300-400 eggs in her lifetime. She will arch her abdomen under a leaf with her wings closed and lay one egg per leaf, usually. I have even  found eggs laid on top of leaves and on the flower buds. 

She will taste plants with her feet in order to choose to correct plant to lay her eggs on, which is determined by certain taste chemicals in the plants.

The egg weighs about .00046 grams and they are tiny, only about the size of a pinhead (1.2mm high and .9mm wide). They're cream colored and oval shaped kind of like a football and have vertical ridges. Once mamma lays the eggs, it will take between 3-5 days to hatch, sometimes longer if the weather is cooler. My first batch this season took nearly 7 days.

In the photo below, you can see there is more than one egg. Either another female came by or the same one came back around after laying eggs on other leaves. If milkweed is hard to find they will do what is called "egg stacking" where they lay multiples on one leaf. But typically she will only lay one per leaf and there is a very good reason for that.

Same leaf, four days later . . . 

Below, you can if you look closely, see the ridges in the egg and that it's becoming slightly translucent. You can see black at the top of the egg which is the caterpillars head and two black dots below that which are tentacle buds. These eggs are almost ready to hatch . . . which brings me to the reason a monarch mamma will try to lay only one egg per leaf. Once the caterpillar hatches it will immediately eat it's own egg casing (chorion) and if the others haven't hatched yet, it's quite possible that they will eat the other eggs. Yes, they can be cannibalistic. And much to my horror I watched a larger caterpillar grab a 1st instar cat  right off of a flower bud and eat it!!

And here it is my friends, a newly hatched (could even be a day old) monarch caterpillar on my fingertip. Isn't it just so cute! They are so very delicate, and I don't recommend holding one at this stage, but I wanted to be able to show you how very tiny they are. Look at your fingertip and imagine how small this really is, about 2mm. At this stage it is now called a larva (or caterpillar) and is in its 1st instar or first stage of 5 in its life as a larva. Since a caterpillars skeleton is on the outside of its body and will need to shed its skin in order to keep growing. During the 1st instar it will be 2-6 mm in length and the front tentacles are only small bumps.

You'll notice it doesn't have any stripes yet and is almost translucent with a greenish-gray coloring...that's hard to see here. Once it eats a certain amount of milkweed it will begin to get it's coloring and stripes.

Here he is a little bigger, still translucent and no distinct color pattern yet - still a 1st instar. If you have eggs and noticed that they've hatched but can't find them, chances are they are hiding in between some of that new green growth at the top of the plant...they are very good at hiding!

Next up we'll be watching them get bigger and bigger and bigger  . . . after hatching, they grow

nearly 3000 times their original size!! Let me just say, by the time they get to the 5th instar, they are

a full fledged eating machine, which makes them pooping machines! And since I rear mine inside,

it makes for a lot of clean up duty right before they pupate! They are kind of like babies, except that

they never sleep, lol.

If you missed the beginning of the series, you can find it here.

Until next time,

Love, Kim

P.S - I've been getting random failure notices when I leave comments on some of your blogs, but when

I go and look, my comments are there. And I have noticed some comments on my blog whereI never

received my email notifications. So, make sure you check your blog for comments in case you just rely

on email. I know others who have had the same issue lately, not sure what the deal is?

sharing with Little Things Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things, Share Your Cup

My journey with the monarchs: No.2

Originally . . . I had really wanted to plan all of this out, from beginning
to end before sharing this series, but time has just not allowed for that.
Instead, I sit here flying by the seat of my pants hoping that I can convey
what is in my heart, and any lessons that I learned along the way.
So,
when I forget something, and I'm sure I will, I'll be back to share
when I remember, deal?

(you can find the first in this series, here)


Milkweed: Loss of Habitat

The milkweed plant (genus Asclepias) is the only host plant that a monarch will lay their eggs on and eat as larva. And, their habitat as well as the monarch itself has severely declined. In fact, the Monarch Population Status, the overwintering numbers from Mexico this past fall were the lowest ever recorded since they started counting them 20 year ago.

I remember last November, around Thanksgiving, reading an article that showed up in my Facebook feed and I got a pit in my stomach. You see, they estimate that a billion or more monarchs once made the 2,500 mile trip along the migration route and although each year it varies and sometimes extremely, the size of their migration has over the last decade been in a steep and steady decline. In 2012 there were just over 60 million monarchs that made it to their overwintering sites, which was a record low, until this past fall when only 33 million butterflies made it covering only 1.65 acres.

Two years ago, here in Texas we had a massive drought which became a problem as they migrated back through to Mexico most likely not finding any nectar to survive the trip. And before that there was a catastrophic weather event in Mexico while they were overwintering that killed millions upon millions of butterflies that would never make the trip back north. Even this spring has proven to be difficult with prolonged cold temperatures. But, their dwindling numbers go well beyond the things that we cannot control.

But probably the most detrimental to the monarch has been their loss of habitat. The expansion of row crops, namely corn and soybean where the milkweed grew,  is now being planted with crops that are herbicide (roundup) resistant. When the farmers plowed the fields to keep weeds at bay, the milkweed would just eventually grow back, but now with all the chemicals they have all but been wiped out. Some states have lost up to 90% of their native milkweed.

The monarch has shown in the past that they can over a several year period, and with good weather, bounce back. But how can they continue to do that if there is less and less milkweed each year. 

And you know what? There is a direct correlation between the introduction of Monsanto's GMO corn and soybeans, the loss of milkweed, and the decline of the monarch. 

Right here, right now, the best chance that the monarch has is for each of us to plant milkweed in our gardens along with nectar plants. You can find milkweed plant & seed suppliers here. 

Their mortality rate in the wild, without any of these other obstacles is about 90-95 %, maybe even a little more. Besides all of the other obstacles, the red wasps and assassin bugs here love to eat them, and they become hosts to a multitude of parasitoids, and diseases. Then there is the problem with things like aphids, spider mites, and thrips which can all cause problems with the quality of the milkweed itself.

I had a friend ask me the other day why I bring the caterpillars inside, why didn't I just leave them outside where they belong? Last year I raised and released over 400 monarch butterflies and according to statistics, if left to their own in nature that would have equated to about 30-40 butterflies. I live in Texas, and we are a very important corridor in the migration both north and south. Some of the very first eggs are laid here, to be the next generation to continue their incredible journey north. And then finally it's the 4th or 5th generation of this amazing butterfly, that will begin the longest migration of any insect as they journey south 2,500 miles to a place it has never been, to overwinter and begin the cycle again the next spring. 

For me their story is about hope and renewal and beauty through change. For me, it's a little miracle. So I bring them inside to give them a fighting chance until they can fight it again on their own. 

We all need a little help now and again, don't we?

(No 3 in the series can be found here)

Until next time -

Love, Kim

sharing with Little Things Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things, Friday Finds