Raising Monarch Butterfly Caterpillars

Raising Monarch Butterflies At Home in Connecticut. Copyright Valerie Allgrove 2025. Milkweed is the only food of the Monarch Butterfly. You can pick a bunch of Milkweed leaves and keep in in your fridge like you’d keep lettuce. Caterpillars should not be touched until they are larger, at least an inch. If you have nicotine, hand lotion, or sweat, on your hands, do not touch. Use a new toothpick or paintbrush if you need to move them. Make sure any container is escape proof. If you put holes in a lid make sure to smooth out the insides. Do not keep large caterpillars with tiny ones, the big ones will eat them. Give fresh leaves daily and clean the droppings. Make sure to feed before night as that is when the caterpillars feed the most. Summer brood live for about 3 weeks, they eat, eat, eat, then pupate into a chrysalis, then hatch and mate, lay eggs. Never leave your caterpillars or pupas in the sun. When it starts to get cold, do not bring them indoors, they need the cold to trigger them to migrate. As the caterpillars get larger, add some twigs to your container. If you have twigs that have several branches this can be helpful. When the caterpillars are ready to turn into a pupa, they will create a silk “button” on a stick then hang upside down in a “J” until their skin is ready to split. It’s important not to move or disturb the creature at this time. They may pupate on the underside of a leaf, the side of your container, or the lid of the container. This is not a problem. At first the new pupa is ugly but within a few hours it will turn waxy light green with gold dots and some black markings. Depending on the temperatures and weather, the chrysalis will take 7-15 days to turn into a butterfly. I have had it take nearly a month. As hatching gets close, the skin will turn perfectly clear so you can see the orange and black wings inside the pupa. There are times at any point in the process where the caterpillar may die. Keeping your container clean by dumping out grass daily is helpful. The screen or perforated lid will keep flies from entering and parasitizing the young butterflies. If all goes well, the adult butterfly will emerge backwards from the chrysalis. Its wings will be tiny and its abdomen huge. This is another time when it’s important to leave the butterfly alone. By pumping its wings, the wings will slowly expand. Over the course of a few hours the wings will harden and the butterfly will be ready to fly.