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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 2, 2018 13:44:10 GMT
Friends, Hello! Today I received dolls from the city of Gubkin of the Belgorod region and immediately the first male!
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 3, 2018 8:45:55 GMT
Friends, hello everyone!
I need your advice. In natural conditions, the female machaon lays eggs hanging in the air above the fodder plant, on the underside of the leaf or on the lateral surface of the stem. What is the best way to do at home? I have a mosquito net mesh width of 40, a height of 100 centimeters. In the pot is specially grown the bush Chaerophýllum témulum but if I put the bush in the cage the butterfly will not have room for the slightest flight inside the tank. Will she lay eggs in such conditions?
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 3, 2018 17:40:15 GMT
You need to hand feed her with 10% sugar/honey water twice a day - use a pin to carefully unroll the proboscis into the water and she will start feeding. When she has had enough she will try to fly away. After a few times she will extend her proboscis herself when you put her on the tissue pad soaked in the food.
There is no problem for her to lay eggs in a small cage filled with the host plant. Put the cage in a bright light to encourage activity.
In nature she would lay by bending her abdomen under a leaf or stem and laying 1 or 2 eggs per plant, but in a small cage she will just keep on laying. She will start laying maybe 24-48 hours after mating (hand pairing of machaon is really easy) but the first few eggs laid are usually infertile. After about 6 or 8 eggs the rest should be fertile and will turn from bright yellow to brownish in a couple of days. If you look at them under a magnifying glass after 24 hours you will see brown speckles on fertile eggs, but the infertile ones will be pure yellow. The eggs will hatch in 5 days to a week depending on temperature.
Don't try eating Chaerophýllum témulum yourself, it is poisonous.
Adam.
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 3, 2018 19:02:27 GMT
Adam, thank you very much! We now have a good 30-degree weather, it's warm and sunny, and a butterfly garden stands on the windowsill so that the whole day until late at night it gets sunlight and air. This morning at 11 o'clock I made an artificial pairing, the duration was 1 hour later the butterflies scattered. The abdomen of the female after mating significantly increased. After I fed them a 5% solution of honey in the way that you wrote and released back into the cage. I noticed that the butterflies were behaving inactive sitting on the spot and basking in the sun, flying badly in the room, falling to the floor and again rushing to the light to the window. It seems to me strange such a bad activity or in the room it is normal? Adam, one more question. At the time of mating, the female was 16 hours after leaving the pupa, which is normal for fertilization. But the male was 24 hours, during which time he ate three times. Has he managed to mature for the fertilization of the female? Maybe it's worth trying to withstand the second male longer?
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 3, 2018 19:09:54 GMT
Oh yeah, I forgot, I thought of Chaerophyllum temulum salad to do.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 3, 2018 22:24:56 GMT
A male can mate the same day as it emerges, no problem. I once had a female from Belgium emerge the day before a male, I put her in one of my flight cages (several square metres), and then added the male the next day. He immediately mated with the female within a few minutes, and she went on to lay OVER 400 fertile eggs!
Mating normally lasts approximately 45 minutes to one hour, so it will have been successful. There is no need to mate her again for a week at least. After that if she mates with another male she will produce fertile eggs for a longer period.
The rushing to and fluttering at the window is a totally normal machaon behaviour That is why I said you should put the female in a small cage with the foodplant completely filling the top and light above her. She will go to the top and immediately sense the foodplant, and when she is ready she will lay eggs on it.
Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 3, 2018 22:32:55 GMT
By the way, I only got a few larvae through to adults from those 400 eggs because I used a lot of the 1st instar larvae as experiments to see if they would accept local Rutaceae or Apiaceae, and at that time I was rearing the others on only a few plants of Ruta graveolens as I didn't have enough foodplant to rear so many. You know they eat A LOT at 4th and 5th instar, I assume! If you have it, carrot is a great foodplant, also Ruta, parsley and celery. They also take Ferula in Central Asia.
Unfortunately they refused to even nibble fresh shoots of Citrus or Coriander, they did start on Zanthoxylum but died at 3rd instar.
Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 3, 2018 22:38:32 GMT
If you are keeping them free flying in a room, then just put the foodplant in the window and the female will fly to it anyway, no need to put her in a cage.
I should also mention the major problem with machaon in a mesh net cage - if she can put her antennae through the mesh they will break off at the base and she will become blind, unable to sense the foodplant properly. It is better to use a fine cloth bag tied over the plant with her inside, rather than a mesh cage.
Adam.
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 4, 2018 9:17:41 GMT
Adam, 400 eggs is just amazing! I have never before cultivated machaon in captivity and heard that the female gives 100 to 120 eggs. Adam, you wrote that the cage should be small with a completely filled up fodder plant. I took a photo so you could see if there were enough plants in it or not. I fed butterflies in the morning with a solution of honey but noticed that the female still feeds on the inflorescences. I think that the female has a problem with the proboscis, it is not twisted with a spiral as it usually is but is in the unfolded state and slightly bifurcated at the end. Apparently it's some kind of birth defect.
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 4, 2018 12:17:48 GMT
Probably I've jinxed the weather. The sky tightened the clouds and it began to rain. I moved the tank to the room and placed a 120-watt lamp on top, I covered the top with the material to keep the heat.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Aug 4, 2018 18:35:24 GMT
You should have the foodplant touching the top of the cage. The female will stay up nearest the light much of the time, and the best way to get her to lay eggs is if she is physically in contact with the foodplant. Is it possible to shorten the height of the cage? There is no need to have an open area for flying above the plant.
The split proboscis is a bit worrying, as that is usually a sign of inbreeding. It could possibly just be a 'birth defect'.
Beware that the set up in the second photo could result in the butterfly dehydrating if the light source is hot.
Adam.
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 4, 2018 20:17:07 GMT
Thank you Adam!
I can not reduce the size of the tank but I put another higher plant inside so it comes to the top. Since the distance between the butterfly and the lamp was reduced, I replaced the incandescent lamp with an energy-saving cold light bulb. The room is warm and we just need an additional light source and not heat, I understand correctly. Adam, maybe you are right about inbreeding, in general butterflies are rather weak, fly badly, often just try to fly but fall to the floor. This pair came out of the pupae an hour after I took them out of the parcel where the pupae lay in a sealed package for a whole week. Tomorrow, new butterflies should leave the pupae and I will divide the other pair to see the state of their activity. Only now I'm not sure whether the males remained, perhaps all the remaining pupae of the female. Adam, if this is so, how many days after mating can you re-pair the male with the new female?
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 5, 2018 5:55:08 GMT
Adam, you were right that a tank made from a grid is dangerous to a butterfly before I kept only caterpillars in it. In the morning I noticed that the female had three legs torn off, two hind legs and one middle one. Today she began to make her first attempts to lay her eggs bending her belly against the plant stem, but because of the lack of hind legs it is difficult for her to do
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 5, 2018 10:40:29 GMT
The last butterflies came out of the pupae. All females and one male so left a new male and female for mating. These butterflies are very different from the first high activity, it is immediately evident that they are strong and healthy. I keep them without a tank, they are free to fly near the window over the plant. I want to wait for a natural mating.
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Post by Maksim khorunov on Aug 11, 2018 10:22:30 GMT
Hello friends!
Perhaps my first experience in breeding machaon will be someone interesting. The first female with missing hind and middle legs could not lay eggs on her own. Obtaining eggs the easy way by systematic massaging of the abdomen also did not produce results so I had to get the eggs and open the belly with a scalpel. Of the 64 pieces 25% after 48 hours deformed as if dry, and they are shiny bright yellow without any visible sculpture, smooth. But 5 pieces of them like normal rounded, acquire a brown color but not completely and the stains are increasing daily all paint the egg brown.
The second healthy female for 2 days laid 49 eggs, how many for yesterday I do not know. Eggs are dramatically different from previous ones in that they are also yellow but the color is matte, have a clear increase of small sculpture. Because the plant was withering and needed to be replaced with a fresh one I cut the eggs along with parts of the plant. I keep the first and second eggs separately in a small open container on a layer of ordinary toilet paper without any fragrances and flavors. They say that they do not need to moisturize but is it so? In nature, however, in any case, Rosa so at night I lightly sprinkled them poliestere. And still important for me information, in the afternoon open containers stand on a window sill of an open window, sunlight or a shadow that is more correct? The sun won't dry? They after all in nature on the idea of on the lower side of leaves with respectively direct rays on them typically not fall so keep in the shadows.
Followed the advice of Adam and the holding female in a small cage with casteneum, she continues to postpone
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