• Raising a beetle
• Raising butterflies
• Raising a mole cricket
• Raising crickets

What you need in advance

Cautions

(General contents limited to common species)

• The process from egg to imago takes 30 to 40 days.
• In nature, a butterfly larva is considered a vermin because it feeds off crops.
• An egg takes five to six days to hatch and become a caterpillar.
• Caterpillars go through molting every three to five days and become pupas.
• After seven to 10 days, the pupa goes through metamorphosis and transforms into a butterfly.
• Butterflies often repeatedly fly back to the place they have flown from before.

Food and ecology

• 1. Collect larvae or eggs in cabbage and buttercup fields in the spring or summer.
  Put the collected larvae or eggs (a long, yellow oval shape about 2 mm in size) in a small bag inside a refrigerator.
• 2. When the plant used for food that was planted in a flowerpot sprouts, give it to the larva or the egg. (When transferring the larva, use a soft paintbrush with sufficient care.)
• 3. If you have no plant in the flowerpot, place a branch for food wrapped with damp cotton at the end inside the box.
• 4. Cover the box with a screen to protect the eggs and larvae from parasitic bees or tachina flies.
  They are very small but they are natural enemies that lay their eggs in the body of butterfly larva and eat off it.
• 5. To raise healthy larvae, make sure to clean off the feces. Also, rinse the container with water and dry it well.
• 6. Since sunlight, wind, and rain are natural phenomena, leave them unless these are too severe.
• 7. The larva after completing molting four or five times sticks itself to a branch and becomes a pupa. Put branches or wooden sticks inside the container for the pupa.
• 8. Separate the branch with the pupa and put it in an area where there is no direct sunlight and good ventilation.
  Make sure that you don’t touch the pupa if possible because even though it isn’t moving, it is going through an important process to become a butterfly.
• 9. During the pupa stage, spray water on it little by little.
• 10. When the pupa becomes a butterfly, place it in a bigger box so that the butterfly can fly.
• 11. Feed the butterfly with diluted honey twice a day.
  Grab the wings and place the forelegs into the honey to feed it.
• 12. If you release the butterfly after observation, it will come back soon.