Alternative monarch foodplants
The following from Bernie Farrell in England:
Living in the UK,where milkweed is not native,one of the commonest problems for monarch breeders is too many eggs and not enough milkweed.Over confidence invariably leads to having too many cats which seem fine when they are small but devour huge quantities of foodplant as they grow.
In an effort to solve this problem,myself and two other friends,Don Wilks and Gary Watson have been experimenting.
Several months ago,Gary reported that his final instar cats had consumed butternut squash before pupating,emerging and pairing.
This was duplicated by both Don and myself,although, at this moment in time I could not say as to whether or not Don got pairings.
Don and I also tried various instar larvae on butternut squash and both came to the same conclusion.This was that all instars could survive for a couple of days on it but none thrived and only final instars succesfully pupated.
Refusing to accept common sense,I have found myself with the same problem again,lots of cats,food for only a few.Fortunately ,I have access to a large Araujia sericofera plant(I think you may call it the moth vine) which I offered to the cats.
They accepted it straight away and have been munching for several days now.
I am enclosing a photo of them which I took about 10 minutes ago.
I apologise to the photographers amongst you but if you think this is bad quality then you want to see the ones which I think are bad!
