Wild Creative Co.

American Lady Butterfly Caterpillar on a Pearly Everlasting leaf

As I've mentioned in the past we no longer sell the Butterfly Raising Kits as we have learned they are not beneficial to to the species. Although it was a wonderful project I dreamed up quite a few years ago that became a beautiful reality, once learning that we were not helping the butterflies and other pollinators I knew I had to stop. I am here to help share ways to help the pollinators and show you how you can raise your own butterflies. A great way to learn about the species is catching one from the wild and feed and watch it grow and release it when it comes out of its chrysalis. This is what we have done with this one from our garden (and probably hundreds over the past 8 years). we had many caterpillars in our Pearly Everlasting, I kept this one on a potted plant right inside my habitat. that's the simplest way to do it.
If you are thinking of doing this here are a couple of rules for this,
🦋 Make sure you have enough food supply for the caterpillars you keep. Some ways this can be done are harvesting fresh leaves daily from the host plant, or just having a potted host plant in your habitat. The Hungry Caterpillar wasn't lying, they eat and eat and eat! so make sure you have enough.
🦋Make sure you have the correct plant for the caterpillars you have. Each butterfly has its own host plant, this means the adult will only lay eggs on these plants and the caterpillars will only eat this plant as food. So make sure you have the correct plant and butterfly. I love using the iNaturalist app to help ID plants and bugs.
🦋Making sure you are cleaning the habitats between caterpillars, Caterpillars can carry diseases which can be shared amongst each other. Having too many caterpillars in one habitat can also be bad as 1 sick caterpillar can infect any other in your habitat.

I hope this helps you on your journey. If you have questions on this process, please ask!

hey Ontario friends look outside, the red Red Admiral Butterfly has arrived! The Red Admiral butterfly is found in most warmer climates throughout the world
They migrate to Ontario during the spring. We saw so many in the past 2 days. Each species of butterflies has a host plant that they only lay thier eggs on, for the Red Admiral it's the Nettle family of plants. Their favorite foods are nectar from native plants,sap from trees, muddy puddle, even bird droppings and rotting fruit, yum!! 🤪 Hopefully I can track some local Nettle and find some eggs and caterpillar!

PLEASE NOTE: we will not be sell butterfly kits this year. It was a very hard decision but we now know that the farming process is not beneficial to the species so in efforts to actually help pollinators. If you would like to follow along I am hoping to shares the process to raising and releasing wild caught eggs/caterpillars. (We just keep them safe and fed until they emerge and then release them back into the wild).

If you have recently purchased have boxwood shrubs please be on the lookout for these invasive caterpillars.

🚨 Attention! We have confirmed the presence of box tree moth at several retail locations in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. We're actively tracing the movement of product originating from Ontario to other retail locations.

If you have recently purchased boxwood shrubs in these areas, check them for this invasive pest. If detected early, the pest can be stopped. 🛑

For more information: https://bit.ly/3p5LzzC

Check out our holiday photo for this year!
It came out perfect and guess what?? I did it at home all by my self with a small light and a book. I had the kids dress up in their holiday outfits, got everything organized and set up before including the kids. I followed the instructions from Courtney Slazinik - Photography Mentor] and took as many pics as these kids would sit for!

I know that holidays get expensive, here is a great way to get those insta worthy shots without the price tag of a whole photo shoot. Bonus we never had to leave the house!

I will not take credit for this I got the idea and the instructions from Courtney Slazinik - Photography Mentor], go check her insta for the info.