- Joined
- Jun 18, 2004
- Messages
- 512
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.