This book is dedicated to help the monarch population.

The first thing you need to raise monarch caterpillars is milkweed. Milkweed is the only thing that monarch caterpillars will eat. Keep in mind, treating your milkweed plants with spray that kills bugs that you don't want on your milkweed, can very badly harm your monarch caterpillars. Also, just one milkweed is a very bad idea. What can happen is the monarch caterpillars eat the milkweed to the ground, and milkweed can't grow fast enough to produce more food, so your monarch caterpillars would not have any food source anymore. The bare minimum, is four milkweed plants. And the plants should have wide leaves, because it would have more eggs per square inch.

Also, you should never, ever buy tropical milkweed. Tropical milkweed can carry a type of monarch disease, which can very badly harm your caterpillars. You can go with native milkweed, its just that the caterpillars won't have as many eggs on them as wide leaved milkweed. Also native milkweed isn't the best for another reason. They have a hard time supporting monarch caterpillar's heaviness. The branches could tip over, and the caterpillar could fall to the ground. I suggest small, wide leaved, milkweed. However, if you live in a place with a big back yard, you could plant a species of milkweed called Giant Milkweed, and yes that is its real name. They are wide leaved and are huge. They can grow up to 15 feet tall, and 15 feet wide.