Common Type Locality Butterflies
1: Easy butterflies to breed
Butterflies are rather easy to breed. Just every species have different preferences. E.g. one like sweet nectar and others prefer alcohol. Its these preferences that make your breeding successful.
2: Farming with Butterflies
Farming with butterflies is very rewarding. The first small holding on the South Coast in Margate has proved to be very successful. Children and teachers assist in the picking of butterfly eggs from this hedge alongside the parking area where two butterfly species breed on the vine-like creeper. In this particular hedge, a second creeper also grows which is similar to that of the first which three other butterfly species breed on. The length of this particular hedge is 11m long and only a meter in height. It gets harvested every morning and has produced an astonishing 8900 eggs in one week. This season has been a good one.
On the right is a photograph of a cluster of eggs from one particular gravid female. You can count the eggs if you want to, but a rough estimation is 420 eggs. The gravid female had not completed laying her eggs, as she was disturbed and flew off. There are usually up to seven females laying eggs periodically from time to time during the day. Some only lay as many as 30 eggs in a cluster where others lay hundreds in one sitting. The larger butterfly species such as the swallowtails lay their eggs singularly and a distance apart, making harvesting more challenging.
In the photograph on the right (on the left hand side of the cement pathway) one can see the edge of a line of trees that are approximately one meter high on which a certain butterfly species breeds on. This line of young trees is 17m long having 18 young trees in its length. It has been so fruitful in harvesting from it that four other rows of host plants are being planted for yet other species to be bred. On the right hand of the cement pathway, you can see children watering the young new trees which have already started producing fresh eggs laid by one particular species.
One section has been planted with a ground cover, a short shrub-like plant on which several of the pansy butterfly species breed. Here one of the breeders are harvesting young 2nd instar larva which is taken to a nursery under a more controlled environment, so that the breeders don’t have to spend hours looking for them. This area is 17m long and 6m wide and produces a high volume of larva in each brood of each season. However, in the winter months, the two broods are yielding only 40% of the average yield in the other six broods, being about 6000 harvested larva per brood.
At these controlled breeding boxes, fresh host plants are planted and made ready for the next brood of butterfly larva to be harvested from the farming area. Here all parasites are removed, all other plants removed that have no benefit to the butterflies being bred. These breeding boxes, being a confined space, allow us to be able to regulate the breeding processes more accurately and also allows us the opportunity to record information as the cycles progress with written data and photographs. Many of these recordings have not yet been released to the scientific community and many have been adopted as our trade secrets.
Many of your butterfly species (the gravid females) lay single eggs, opposed to clusters of eggs. These females are bagged into nets that are suspended around a branch of the host plant and left alone, to begin the process of laying their eggs singularly. Because they are prohibited to fly off to some other tree to lay yet again one or two eggs, they walk around the inside of the net and lay one egg here and one egg there. By the time they have completed their laying cycle, we have between 80 to a 120 eggs from one gravid female. Now it is easy to remove the eggs from this branch of leaflets and breed them through. We let the female free.
info@sabba.co.za
Q&A
Working with butterflies is not difficult at all. They should be left alone to propagate on their own. It is the environment created in the enclosure (lepidome) that depicts the success rate of your breeding butterflies.
Butterfly Farming is similar to any other live stock farming but with a combination of elements, for example tomato farming. Imagine farming cows and tomatoes together. In this case the cows are the butterflies and the tomatoes are the hostplants. This can be done either in the open land or in a type of hothouse effect.
I will have to answer this question in two steps; these are the open land method or the hot house effect method.
In the open land method, the size of the host plants that you will plant in a certain area will determine your costs. The younger the trees, the longer one would have to wait for them to be big enough to accommodate the butterflies to breed on. And of course it will also only be determined by the size and the amount of trees one wants to plant. But for the answer, we will estimate say 10 (1.5m high) trees. The cost will be no higher than approximately 2 thousand rand. Irrigation of these trees will be calculated by the water used, either bore hole or from a river/stream as well as the weeding of the area. This is minimal for the exception of any labour you would acquire from time to time, let us say another 2 thousand rand for the year, depending what you would pay a labourer. An estimated total of R4000.00. (And this is for an area of 10 square meters).
In the hot house effect method one has to include the hothouse itself. This would be in the region of 18 thousand rand to accommodate the host plants mentioned above in paragraph above. So you are looking at an initial outlay of 20 thousand rand. The structure would measure 10m(L) x 3m(W) x 2.4m(H).
Again, I will have to answer this question in two steps; the open land method or the hot house effect method.
In the open land method, nature takes it own course and depending on the availability of gravid butterflies in your area, this would naturally provide you with thousands of butterfly eggs. Lets take a minimum estimate of 500 butterflies (I cannot say for sure how many butterflies you would be able to breed, as I have no idea just where you are located or what butterflies occur in that area without it being identified).
In the hot house effect method, the yield of butterflies bred in the size of the lepidome mentioned in the answer to question 3, varies from season to season. Summer would yield as many as 10 000 butterflies. In autumn the yield would increase by approximately 15%. In winter this usually drops to almost half of the yield produced in autumn and in spring the yield of butterflies would increase to about 25% of the yield produced in summer.
You would need at least a minimum of 10 square meters for a sized lepidome described in the answer to question 3.
Butterflies are required for many occasions and functions. Here are some examples; for release at weddings as confetti, funerals, parties and other similar functions, school projects and filming of butterflies by independent parties of the film industry. There are also classroom tours and individual local tours to be had. The setting up of a tea garden and small craft shop are also good options to implement. An estimate of the butterflies sold is between 60 and 100 rand depending on the quantity you sell.
Your initial butterfly breeding stock will come from the South African Butterfly Breeding Association (SABBA). For the above mentioned size of the lepidome mentioned in the answer to question 3, you will be supplied with 5 gravid (pregnant) females.
This is difficult to say for sure. But on an average, each graved female should produce no less that 120 eggs each. If you multiply this by 5 females, that would give you 600 eggs.
This is a difficult question, simply because it is not I that will be breeding your butterflies. However should you have the proper training and information and you do everything correctly as you will be taught, then a loss of 10% of your eggs is understandable and you should bring through a healthy 594 butterflies (if each female provided gives you 120 eggs each).
You will attend 3 workshops, in which you will receive adequate training. The workshops are so designed as to allow what you have learned in the first workshop to go and set up the first stage of your butterfly farm, followed by the second and 3rd workshop to get you started on your breeding program.
Yes there is. Before one can start setting up you will need a site inspection to make sure that your lepidome is in the right place. There will also be sampling of butterflies and other insects as well as the identification of local host plants. This will enable SABBA to provide you with the correct butterfly species of your area to breed. The cost of such and inspection is 12 thousand rand and it is a once off.
I will have to answer this question in two steps; the open land method or the hot house effect method.
In the open land method, that would be correct. However, you would still have to attend the three workshops to get you started. The costs of the workshops is R750 per workshop.
In the hot house effect method, that would be correct. However, you would still have to attend the three workshops to get you started. The costs of the workshops is R750 per workshop.
You can redeem your investment with the first brood of butterflies you have bred. Within 3 months
The South African Butterfly Breeding Association (SABBA) will provide you with your orders for the 1st 12 months by which time you should be well established and on your way to operate by yourself. You will also be advertised as a breeder on several butterfly related websites.
Please contact the South African Butterfly Breeding Association (SABBA) directly on the following email address; info@sabba.co.za