butterfly chrysalis kit

From Caterpillar To Chrysalis

The Butterfly Chysalis Kit – Watching Your Caterpillers Turn Into a Chrysalis Are you ready to receive your caterpillars? Great, let’s do it. You can order your caterpillars for the Butterfly Chrysalis Kit in one of two ways; Sending the Caterpillar Certicate you received inside your Insect Lore Butterfly Garden Kit to the address shown on the certificate, enclosing your shipping payment of [UK:  £2.99 or Europe:  €3.49 or USA:  $5.00], or Fill in the easy online form, including your ‘Caterpillar Code’, and pay by credit/debit card or PayPal. Same prices as above.   The website for UK and Europe is: http://insectlore.biz/ The website for the USA is: http://www.insectlore.com/   In either case you’ll be asked to provide a send date. If you’ve purchased Insect Lore’s Garden Butterfly Kit, then you’ll receive a small cardboard box through the post with your caterpillars inside. Mine took about 2 days to arrive. In other words it arrived two days after the day I specified for it to be sent. Don’t get confused with that bit. You specify the day it is sent from the supplier, NOT the day you want to receive it. So allow 2 or 3 days for it to arrive. Inside the box you’ll find a pot with your five caterpillars inside. Take the pot out carefully. It may be upside down and you don’t want the lid flying off. Depending on their age, the caterpillars may be extremely small! I’m talking about a couple of millimeters! So before you think you’ve been had, and sent an empty pot – look again. Those 5 tiny dots are probably your caterpillars. My recent pot had larger caterpillars, but previous ones I’ve had have been so small as to be almost unrecognisable. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDb-nqIw5NE You can also see this video of the live butterfly chrysalis kit on YouTube. Set the pot down, take a few minutes to watch – you’ll probably see them all moving at some point. Congratulations, you have live caterpillars! Don’t be tempted to take the lid off. You may lose a caterpillar in the process as they often climb high and may be on the lid itself and fall out. The lid is stiff, so a sudden jerk will almost certainly lose them. The pot contains more than enough food for all the caterpillars during their entire stay. The food is that brown stuff at the bottom of the pot. It’s a special formula to keep them fed and happy so they don’t need anything else at this stage. If you are tempted to put food in, it may not be the right food for the caterpillar and they will not eat it. That means it will likely rot in the bottom of the pot causing a health problem for all your caterpillars. You have been warned. Be amazed as the caterpillars grow from a tiny couple of millimetres to a centimeter or two! The growth rate is phenomenal. They achieve a size that is 10,000 to 20,000 …

From Caterpillar To Chrysalis Read More »

Transfer Chrysalis To Butterfly Housing

At some point they naturally start to gravitate towards the lid of the pot. You’ll notice they’ll be spending more time up the sides and near the lid. You’ll know at this point they are preparing for the next stage of their growth – to turn into a chrysalis. Soon one of them one attach its tail to the fibre mat that is stuck to the lid. This is there so they can easily grip on with their ‘tail’ and hang down. The caterpillar will gradually lower its body and form a sort of ‘J’ shape. It’s at that point they will start to harden and turn into a chrysalis. It may take a day or so for this to happen. Usually they don’t all do this at exactly the same time, so you have plenty of opportunities to observe this process. You may notice on some of the high points down the length of the body, a line of gold highlights once the chrysalis has fully formed. You may need to catch them in the right light to see the gold effect against the drab background colour of the chrysalis. Once the last of your caterpillars has formed a chrysalis, wait a day or so for it to harden off and then carefully prise the lid off to get at the mat. It’s lightly stuck on to the lid, so gently peel it off. Now, either take a safety pin, and pin the mat vertically on the side of the butterfly habitat, or use a paper-clip and shape it so it can hook into the mat and the side of the habitat. The video below shows the paper-clip method: httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUe1GqSsoLc If a chrysalis gets knocked off, or comes loose, just place it on a piece of kitchen paper on the floor of the habitat. Placing a twig vertically nearby will help that butterfly climb higher when it’s ready to pump up its wings. . What happened next? Did I get a butterfly from each chrysalis? Click here to read the next page, when the chrysalis turned into a butterfly.Lee Please let me know how you get on! Use the comments box below at the bottom of the page or contact me. I’ve looked out the best sources for the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden for the UK and USA, and you can see these below: For the UK: For the US: Please let me know how you get on! Use the comments box below at bottom of the page or use the Contact Form.

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