Butterfly Kits to Raise Butterflies Yourself

There are a number of butterfly kits out there and they are all pretty similar and all use pretty much the same techniques for raising butterflies at home or at school. So it doesn't get any easier than this.

Let's look first at what you get for your money. In all cases the butterfly kits come supplied with:

• Some form of butterfly housing, usually mesh or sometimes a box with plastic windows
• A feeder
• Instructions
• Certificate for ordering caterpillars

Why the certificate? Well you need to be sure you are ready to raise the butterflies. You know, have a place to put them, make sure you are not going away, are able to feed if necessary and release them of course. The caterpillars might be sent at the wrong time (you don't necessarily get them sent as soon as you order, sometimes you may need to wait until the appropriate time of year or there may be sudden demands on stock which cause delays).

If you are doing this for school, then making sure you get the caterpillars at the start of the school session or term and not near the school break would be a good idea. The thought of emerging butterflies in a closed container whilst the school is shut is not good.

Generally allow 3 to 5 weeks for the full cycle of caterpillar to butterfly. So plan accordingly. In European countries, it may take a few weeks longer because of the cooler climate.

Butterfly Kit Experience with Painted Ladies

Here's what I experienced with a butterfly kit I purchased online.

Ordering was easy, and once I knew I had a 3 - 5 week period where I was going to be around, sent in my certificate to claim my caterpillars.

It's a bit strange receiving live stock through the post, sealed up in a box, but the container and contents arrived safely and completely unharmed.

There was a clear sticker on the box telling me what to do which was a good thing as you can see here in the photo. So I didn't stick it on a window sill in the sun to be opened later!

Inside the box was a relatively small container, about the size of a small yogurt pot. The pot is partially filled with what I can only describe as 'grunge-looking stuff'. The grunge is actually the caterpillar food, consisting of nutrients and everything they need to develop.

Don't be tempted to put anything else in there, it's not needed and may actually cause problems if it decays. There's more than enough food in the pot to keep them going for a long time.

The pot has a tight-fitting lid which is perforated to allow air in, so don't cover these up. Also don't be tempted to take the lid off at this stage, there is a special pad inside upon which the caterpillars will eventually attach themselves to become a chrysalis.

You might also lose the caterpillars if you remove the lid - they are just so small when they first arrive. In fact I wasn't sure I'd received anything at all at first, just a pot with 5 black bits inside. The 'bits' turned out to be the caterpillars! I could tell - they moved ha, ha.  Yes, the pot picture above contains the 5 caterpillars!

They grow pretty fast, much faster than I'd first appreciated. Of course, if I'd remembered my own butterfly facts page, I'd have known that they can grow up to 27,000 times their original size! Doh.

Still, it's one thing knowing the facts, quite another seeing it for yourself. Nothing beats the real thing for learning and being amazed.

The caterpillars start to dig around in the grunge and they also start to spin lots of silk so you'll soon have what looks a complete mess inside the pot. That's kids for you! They will be at the caterpillar stage for 1 to 2 weeks.

The exact period will depend upon the temperature of their surroundings. If you have a warm home/school or climate, say around 24C or 76F, then you can expect the process to take around 1 week. Incidentally, I temporarily placed the pot onto a window-sill so that I could take the above photograph with the sunlight illuminating the pot enough for you see inside, but don't ever be tempted to put the pot on a window-sill or in direct sunlight - they will fry inside. I immediately removed the pot after taking the photograph to a place out of the sun.

Not long after this stage you'll be wondering whether they are going to survive - the food is disappearing, there are droppings everywhere and the pot is full of confused silk. Fear not, they know what they are doing, and do it they will. One day you will see the caterpillars migrating to the top of the pot and you will know the moment has come for the next stage - that of the chrysalis.

I was lucky enough to capture a photograph of the caterpillars making their way to the paper pad at the top and some of them are already hooking their tails into the fabric, ready to make the change. You can also clearly see the swirls of silk.

Once the caterpillars have securely fastened themselves using the hooks in their tails, they will swing loose and just hang down. It may take a day for the chrysalis to form and then a further 5 or 6 hours for it to harden. So make sure this sort of period has passed before you are tempted to open the pot.

Carefully prise open the lid - the paper pad may be attached to the lid so you may knock off any chrysalis if you suddenly pop the lid off. Carefully peel the pad off the lid. I found this a bit awkward as the chrysalides were evenly spaced and didn't leave much room for me to get a grip on the pad.

Don't worry if you do knock a chrysalis loose, just put it onto the bottom of the housing on some kitchen paper and put a twig near it for the butterfly to climb once it emerges. Some suggest gluing the chrysalis back onto the paper pad, but I think you risk damaging the chrysalis in the process, so leave it. It happens in nature and they cope well enough.

You'll need to have prepared or assembled the housing at this stage. Instructions vary depend on what butterfly kit you bought. Mine was a square cardboard box with clear plastic windows which I had to assemble first, but that was just a case of putting tags into slots, so nothing to tax anyone there. You may have a net housing or pavilion as they are sometimes called and there's even less to assemble with those.

When you are handling the chrysalides you'll have a better opportunity to see the subtle colours especially gold or bronze. You can't always see these well in the pots.

OK, so carefully take your paper pad of chrysalides and tape it to the inside of the butterfly housing if you have a card housing, or use a safety pin to secure it if you have the net housing type. Don't secure them too high up, 4cm or an inch-and-a-half from the floor is sufficient.

Here's how my paper pad looked after securing to the back wall of my cardboard butterfly house. By the way, the observant amongst you will notice that there are only four chrysalides whereas I mentioned having five caterpillars.

Sadly one of caterpillars didn't make it past the tiny stage. You are warned that one or two might not survive, so allow for that too. Most suppliers seem to be pretty good saying that if most don't survive right at the beginning they will supply new ones.

When you are handling the chrysalides at this stage you may notice that some of them start shaking vigorously. In fact you may have already seen them doing it whilst they were hanging in the pot. This is perfectly normal and is a natural mechanism used to ward of predators. It's fascinating to see.

At this stage, having put them into your housing, you'll need to wait 7 to 14 days before they emerge as butterflies. Again, some European countries may find this period extended slightly. So with this wait in mind, don't be tempted to rush in and start to decorate the housing with things such flowers, leaves etc. These will just die in that period.

Instead, wait until the butterflies have emerged and their wings have hardened off. Then you can put in natural objects such as twigs, flowers, leaves and maybe a few pebbles.

Here you can see two of the butterflies have emerged more-or-less at the same time and are hardening off their wings. The process involves pumping blood into their wings to 'pump' them up and takes about 1 to 2 hours, so plenty of time to see this process. It usually happens first thing in the morning so much sure the first thing you do every day is to check the housing. If you wait until later in the day you'll likely have missed it all! They plan it so that they have the warmth of the day to help them, so you'll never normally see this process late in the day.

You may observe at some stage in the process that the butterfly weeps a red fluid from its tail. This is perfectly normal and is merely left-over colouring from the wings along with other unneeded stuff. If you look carefully at my photograph above you can just see a dark stain immediately below the pad which is what that is. It's called meconium.

At this stage you can call the decorators in. Don't overdo it, the butterflies will occasionally take to flight and too many twigs, sticks and other tallish stuff may damage their wings. Just a few flowers and twigs will be fine along with pebbles and maybe a few leaves.

Mix two teaspoons of sugar into 8 fl oz (200ml) of cold water to make a butterfly feed. I was supplied with a pipette in my kit so I was able to use this to drop the sugar solution onto fresh flowers I'd put into the housing as well as putting a shallow dish (lid) with sugar solution in.

You can see this lid feeder in the background of the photo here and a fully-hardened butterfly feeding on the flowers with sugar solution on them. Fantastic. My first butterfly from a butterfly kit.

Keep any remaining sugar solution in a fridge to keep it fresh and change the flowers if they are starting to wither and die. Butterflies also like fresh cut oranges and old bananas, so if you can, add these too. You'll often see these fruits used in many butterfly farms and houses to feed the butterflies as they clearly love them.

Tempted as you might be to keep the butterflies in the butterfly kit housing for long periods, please remember to release them back into their natural environment after a few days of observation. You'll often find they will stay around your area anyway, particularly if you have butterfly-attracting plants.

If you don't have many flowers in your garden or area, you can alternatively provide a butterfly feeding station to see if they are tempted to stay around. When setting them free, I gently persuaded the butterflies onto my fingers and removed the butterflies from the butterfly housing to place them strategically on flowers in my garden. These are the butterflies I raised in the photographs above and below, they were very willing sitters whilst I set up the camera!

One of the butterflies started feeding immediately on the flower I placed it on which was thrilling. You can clearly see in the photograph on the left here the butterfly using its proboscis to feed.

They stayed around the garden a few hours before heading off. I guess they were tempted by better things elsewhere so I'll make sure I have an arsenal of temptations the next time I use a butterfly kit. I will use more butterfly kits, as it's a very rewarding thing to do and experience.

By the way, you can re-use the housing and just purchase caterpillars next time around, making it an even cheaper event. So that's it, my experience with a kit. Good luck with your own butterfly kit, I hope you have as much fun as I did!

I've looked out various sources for butterfly kits for the USA and UK, and you can see these in the right-hand column on this page. Click the following link to be taken straight to the butterfly kits section.

You can also make your own butterfly kit by following the instructions on the raising butterflies page.