Monarch caterpillar questions

I have a couple of milkweed which I got from the Geauga Parks Earth day last year! I now have 3 monarch caterpillars on them. Will they form their cocoons directly on the milkweed? Will only having 2 milkweeds sustain them? What can I do to protect them from predators?

Thanks for inquiring about Monarchs and milkweed. It’s great that you’ve got Monarch caterpillars on your plants.

The caterpillars generally do not form the chrysalis on the milkweed plant. They usually crawl off the plant and attach it somewhere else nearby — sometimes it could be on a fence post or on the side of a house or on the underside of a kayak (as Naturalist Trevor found out the other day).

I don’t know if your two plants will sustain them. That depends on how big the caterpillars are. If they are close to two inches long, then they are probably close to being done with the eating stage of their life.

As far as protection from predators, you might want to put them in a critter container and rear them. You would just need to supply milkweed leaves and keep the containers clean until they make the chrysalis. If you choose to do that, keep the rearing containers outside so they are exposed to day/night/warm/cold, which will ensure that they migrate. Scientists think rearing them indoors messes up the migration instinct — and we don’t want that!

-Naturalist Linda Gilbert