# Making artificial butterfly diet



## fantasticp (Oct 8, 2009)

Ok. Maybe no one knows the answer to this, but I can hope. I want to raise Papilio cresphontes (Giant swallowtail butterflies) The host plants are citrus trees, which I have, but let's face it, caterpillars are voracious. When you go to sites like www.educationalscience.com, they have plenty of artificial diets for other host plants but not for citrus host plants. They also sell "ingredients common to artificial diets", such as vitamins and soy flour which make you think you could make your own but nowhere on the internet can I find a recipe for any butterfly or moth. I did find one site that was describing that an artificial diet could be made containing as little as 10% dried powdered host plant leaves, with no loss of weight or fertility to the butterfly. If anyone has an artificial diet recipe for ANY butterfly that I could attempt to modify, I would be uber grateful.


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## ftorres (Oct 9, 2009)

Hello All,

Cloei check this link sign in and post away.

I hope this could be of any help.

http://www.insectnet.com/cgi/dcforum/dcboard.cgi


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## fantasticp (Oct 9, 2009)

ftorres said:


> Hello All,
> 
> Cloei check this link sign in and post away.
> 
> ...


LOL I thought that site was dead, except for the classifieds.

Edit: Plus, they like to kill their butterflies over there.
Edit #2: I'm not giving my address and phone number just to join their site:/ That's rediculous.


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## spiderfield (Oct 9, 2009)

Try sleeving the larva on the tree itself.  I don't know of any artificial diet recipes myself, but I think you've got a great situation, and you should take advantage of it.    You've got the hostplant on your property already, rather than having to search out empty lots for the proper foodplant, buying potted plants from home depot, etc.

I've raised this species last year (was finally able to spot a female ovipositing on a citrus bush I planted at my mom's when I still lived there).  Unfortunately, they would not switch to other citrus species once they had started feeding on that bush, so I had to drive often to my mother's to pick up some fresh cuttings every few days (~25 miles from where I currently live). :}


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## fantasticp (Oct 9, 2009)

spiderfield said:


> Try sleeving the larva on the tree itself.  I don't know of any artificial diet recipes myself, but I think you've got a great situation, and you should take advantage of it.



Well, aside from the fact the trees aren't _so_ large that I want larvae feeding edlessly on it, it would be nice to have an artificial diet so that I could give caterpillars to people and I wouldn't catch them hopping my fence to steal leaves.....Plus, isn't it fun to come up with new recipes?


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## spiderfield (Oct 9, 2009)

fantasticp said:


> ...and I wouldn't catch them hopping my fence to steal leaves.....Plus, isn't it fun to come up with new recipes?


I used to do this a lot when I was in college...not hopping into peoples' yards, but frequenting abandoned lots and such.  A lot of the places were next to major roads so I would usually wait 'til night to harvest some caterpillar food so people wouldn't think me weird. :} 

This is the closest thing I could find to a recipe:

http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...26C3637422.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=765264

The species in question naturally feeds on Castor Bean, according to the abstract.  To mimic this in the diet they add Castor Bean oil.  I'm sure the replacement of this ingredient with any plant's natural oil will suffice for an artificial diet...that's the first crucial ingredient.  The second is the addition of agar...this will solidify (not completely) the whole mixture.  Everything else provides nutritional and preservative value.  Hope this helps! 

-Ryan


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