In association with Jane Goodalls “Roots and Shoots” grant we created a program for the children to interact with monarch butterflies. We built a small protection box to house our mature caterpillars. We would provide them clean (OE free) food and a safe space. Because of our location we have a disease that kills Monarchs called OE. This disease kills the Monarchs as the change from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
If you trim back your “Tropical” Milkweed (where the disease thrives) during the off season and allow it to regrow, OE is kept to a minimum. If you do not, it will kill the majority of Monarchs that touch the plant.
We made it our mission to save as many as we could.
The students of ‘For The Children First Inc.’ participated in helping the Monarchs grow and prosper in the Florida area this past year.
We had well over 42 Monarchs that we assisted from caterpillar to butterfly. We would find mature caterpillars and put them in a hand built cage with clean (OE free) milkweed to eat. They would finish their food and go into transformation mode!
The program was setup to combat the “OE” disease that is prevalent in FL because milkweed does not die back each year. We cut the plants down and had them grow back and under controlled environments we lost only three to the disease during this project.
Sadly, the following season we lost over 23 to the same disease because of uncut milkweed present in the area.