Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Share photos of your cat cages, 1 by TexasPuddyPrint

TexasPuddyPrint wrote:
Please share photos of your caterpillar houses/cages for others to see.

I use a variety of plastic containers, pop up meshed clothes hampers, aquariums and reptariums. The plastic containers are everything from the Gladware or Rubbermaid used for food storage to larger 12 or 15 qt storage bins. I cut out a large hole in the tops and hot glue tule/mesh fabric over it to allow for the circulation of air.

I also use wet floral foam pressed or set into small dishes, tins, bottle caps and jar lids. The wet floral foam is excellent in that it absorbs and holds water. You can then stick cuttings or leaf stems into it and the caterpillars can crawl over it without you having to worry about them drowning in standing water.

I buy that at Walmart quite inexpensive for a package of three blocks. Pull out the eaten or dried cuttings/leaves and replace them with fresh ones or just throw the whole thing away and replace it with a clean piece of wet floral foam. I add water as it evaporates within a day or two in this south Texas heat.

~ Cat

The photo shows a plastic cup with wet floral foam and citrus cuttings. You can see a Giant Swallowtail egg on the lower leaf that is touching the wooden bench. This of course goes into the cat cage so predators won't get to it.

This message was edited Nov 20, 2006 8:23 AM