Disclaimer

General information only

Everything on this site is general educational information. It is written for a wide audience across a whole continent, and it cannot account for your species, your climate, your local host plants, or the particular caterpillar in front of you.

It is not a substitute for advice from someone who can actually look at your situation.

Not veterinary or professional advice

This site is not written by a veterinarian, an entomologist, a biologist, or a lawyer, and nothing here is veterinary, medical, scientific, legal or professional advice of any kind.

For anything where being wrong carries real cost — a disease you are trying to identify, a permit question, whether to release an animal at all — check with the people whose job that is:

• Your state or provincial agricultural extension service.
• Your state or provincial wildlife or natural resources agency.
• A veterinarian or invertebrate specialist, for a sick animal you are trying to treat.
• A conservation organisation such as the Xerces Society or Monarch Joint Venture, for rearing and release ethics.

Raising live animals carries risk

Caterpillars die. They die of disease you cannot see when you collect them, of parasitoids already inside them, of mould, of the wrong host plant, of pesticide residue on plants sold as safe, and sometimes for no reason you will ever identify. A project that follows every instruction here can still end with nothing emerging.

Plan for that, especially with a class. Rear more than you need, and tell children at the start that some will not make it.

There is also ordinary physical risk: wash hands after handling larvae, frass or enclosures; some caterpillars have irritating hairs or spines; bleach solutions used for sterilising need the usual care; and children need supervision with all of it.

Local regulations are your responsibility

Collecting, keeping, transporting, buying, selling and releasing native insects is regulated, and the rules differ by state, by province, and sometimes by county or municipality. Some species are protected. Some jurisdictions require a permit to rear or release. Moving live insects across state, provincial or national lines is restricted in ways that catch people out.

Nothing on this site grants permission, and no page here should be read as saying a particular activity is legal where you are. Before you collect, rear, move or release anything, confirm the current rules with your own wildlife or agriculture agency. That responsibility is yours.

Release and disease

Releasing reared butterflies is not automatically harmless. Poor hygiene in a rearing container can amplify disease and send it back into the wild population, and animals released far from where their parents were found can interfere with local genetics and migration behaviour.

Where this site describes release practice, it describes what is generally understood to reduce that harm. It is not a guarantee that a given release is safe or appropriate.

No guarantees

No timing, temperature, survival rate or emergence date given here is a promise. Development times vary with temperature, humidity, genetics and food quality, and every figure on the site is an approximation offered to help you plan.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, please say so: hi@raisingabutterfly.com. Corrections are welcome and get made.