Pop-up Butterfly Habitat Terrarium

Ordered this after I found 2 Monarchs munching on a Milkweed plant I bought from Lowe's. Read up on Monarchs and saw that I needed a habitat for them to keep the predictors away. Brought them inside @ the habitat come in one day. After about a week as chrysalis's they "eclosed" or emiraged as butterflies. Totally amazing. After about 4 hrs I released them outside after their wings were dry. Hate to see them go, but we found another 2 or 3 instar cat munching on our milkweed plant. Looks like we have another cat to raise & release. The Restcloud habitat works great for me, a first time user. Don't know if it will work with 20 cats. The problem is having enough milkweed to feed them all. I just bought another plant at Lowe's. I don't know if it has eggs from the nursery, or whether a Monarch will lan on it & lay eggs. But as soon as I see cats munhing away it will be placed in the habitat & come inside. The habitat is well worth the price & is of very good quality & construction. I am now the Monarch "expert" in my family due to the purchase of one milkweed plant. I'm sure that you, your children, family & neighbors will enjoy raising & releasing Monarch butterflies.

I raise hundreds of butterflies even Moths, from Monarchs to Black Swallowtails, Gulf Fritillary, Common Buckeye, Giant Leopard Moth etc. I got 6 36 inch enclosures, 2 12 inch & just got the 23 inch enclosure. A friend had lend me her 23 inch enclosure, made by a different Company, since I still have a bunch of babies Gulf Fritillaries & try to keep them separate from the adults. Boy, can I see a quality difference between hers and mine from RESTCLOUD. RESTCLOUD is a way better construction, top to bottom. The zipper, the opening bigger on the RESTCLOUD. More stable, square construction. I use laundry detergent Persil with a sponge to clean the enclosures and so far I get them very clean. Some enclosures I have used over & over again and they get very dirty since I put whole pots in them. I did get 2 holes in one but I was scrubbing it a little too hard. Was able to sew them. You do have to be careful when using the zipper that a caterpillar is not on the zipper. The zippers have no cover. One customer talked about that idea. Maybe RESTCLOUD could add a small strip of material over the zipper, so we do not zip up our caterpillars. But till then, we just have to look first, before we open the enclosures. I highly recommend them.

I purchased this as well as a cylinder enclosure. This works SO much better. I put the vinyl side down - so the caterpillar "frass" can be easily wiped up as well as when the butterflies emerge, they usually drop what looks like blood. The caterpillars can easily pupate on the top mesh panel - on the cylinder style enclosure, I had some spin chrysalises on the top panel which opens up - difficult to clean the enclosure without harming the chrysalises.

We are raising a few Monarch caterpillars this year. This cage is perfect- one side is see through, the other zips open on the side, so we can add more plants without disturbing chrysalis'. It comes with a great info sheet-in color- how to raise butterflies, preparing the cage, finding the caterpillar eggs (for many caterpillar types), how to care for the caterpillars, how to care for the chrysalis with pictures of the stages and finally, how to care for the butterfly once it emerges. The caterpillars are eating alot of milkweed, and the side opening zip is such an awesome feature!

Perfectly sized and very easy to use! I let the caterpillars develop outside on milkweed plants, then when they get large I move them inside into the cage. I give them a small milkweed cutting daily until they crawl to the top of the cage. Then, when they emerge from the chrysalis, I leave them in the cage for one more day. Then I carry the cage outside, open it, and they leave at their leisure - usually the next morning.

I have no experience with anything like this. I just happened to buy a milkweed plant at the home store. If I leave the caterpillars outside when they're full gown, maybe 1 in 10 chrysalises and becomes a butterfly. When I bring them inside and put them in this cage, the success rate is more like 90%.