Insect Lore Two Cups of Caterpillars Deluxe - 10 Live Baby Caterpillars with Stickers - Raise and Relase Painted Lady Butterflies

This is a great project. So far I purchased this a dozen times for my 4 yoa daughter. I now purchase it for her class. Its a great value, and experience to take care of living amd watch them grow. Easy to care for The kids loves it

Have bought for several years running now - the "worst" showing we had was 7/10 of the caterpillars making it to butterflies. This year all ten made it. The top where they make their chrysalis does NOT do a good job of hanging on to them....the most common problem is a chrysalis will fall. If you see this and use a pair of tweezers to quickly pluck the chrysalis up out of the crap at the bottom and reattach it to the lid with his buddies, all will be well. Have had to do this many times.

These arrived just as they appear in the images, with all of the parts listed. All 10 caterpillars were alive, changed into their chrysalis within 2 days of each other, and emerged as butterflies within two days of each other, too. It was about 2 weeks exactly from the time that the caterpillars arrived to the time they emerged, to give you a sense of the timeline. (They went into chrysalis at about 7 days after their arrival.) It was neat to watch the whole process with the students, and they especially liked releasing them. I would purchase these again! If I were to suggest one thing to the company, it might be making a larger surface area for the lid. In each container, there wasn’t much space for the caterpillars to hang for their chrysalis, and one chrysalis did get knocked down into the substrate by another when it was wiggling it’s old skin off. I had to pick it up and tie it with a string to the mesh on the side of the enclosure, and it did survive.

This was fantastic! My boys loved it and it was a great learning experience for my kiddos! I do have 3 concerns though. With 5 caterpillars in each cup, towards the end about a few days before they pupate the cup becomes so gross. They literally are walking all over their own excrement. Also, these cats get pretty big and when they climb to the top to pupate there is not enough room for them and they fight for space while J hanging. (That is the process they start just before they form a chrysalis). They need to supply a larger cup. And just a little more food. It was really coming down to the wire at the end. I was worried they would need more food. Other than those concerns, this was a nice experience. They just need to make improvements for the better for these little guys though. Watching them fight like that and the stress they must have been feeling must have been awful for them. :(

I have ordered these butterflies before. I always order two sets so that my morning class and afternoon class each have the opportunity to let the butterflies go. This time around i received only 4 caterpillars in one jar and five in the other. Two caterpillars in the four jar never survived getting into the chrysalis and the other two didn't make it out of the chrysalis. The five caterpillar jar, four turned to butterflies and one never made it out of the chrysalis. I also purchased lady bugs and there were no issues there.