Butterfly Farming.

If you get one with enough spine to throw his gauntlet down with you to spot the one who never had enjoyed a prancing time with butterflies, take it for sure, it is turning out to be the best bet in your life. Because butterflies are always insistent in its beauty- s imply awesome and momentous. But, did ever farming butterflies for sale catch your fancy? It is exactly what is happening in several countries around you, from Papua New Guinea to Kenya. They are in to this business for quite long. For the traders the butterflies are low volume, high value property and most useful resource of these countries. When the outside world came to know about the exotic flora and fauna of the countries like Papua New Guinea , people- researchers , merchants and smugglers have started to make a beeline ever since to these countries eyeing the largely unexplored natural resource. The varieties of exotic butterflies happened to be a main target. Of course, some are genuine researchers, but black marketing and mindless hunting flourished. Laws were made to prevent it. But by the time many rare species already started to cross the border of extinction. Then the idea of butterfly farming picked up, motivated mainly by profit and part by ecological reasons. A t the beginning , when the poor farmers have started to spin money from butterfly farming, it was a small scale industry, but soon more and more farmers have joined and now the annual turnover is approximately 30 million US dollars annually. First step of butterfly farming, the farmers will clear a small area enough to build a netted enclosure and fill the area with the food plants for the particular species of butterfly they are targeting. Then the next step is to get hold of a female fertile butterfly. Then she will be placed in the breeding cage to lay her eggs on the leaves. The eggs are harvested and tended until they make the transformation from larva to pupa to butterfly - a process that takes about a month.

Once the farm is well established, pupae can be collected daily. About 50 percent- as many females as males- butterflies should be released to emerge naturally and repopulate the farm. Others, which are not quite perfect also, will be freed. The moment the pupa starts to get darker in color the farmer plucks off the stem or leaf to which the pupa is attached. The new pupae are never touched because it will damage the adult. He pins the leaf to a board or puts it in a net or in a small cage. Often these are kept inside to protect the pupae against pests and large predators. However, some farmers construct small houses out of bush materials to hold pupae ready for hatching. Others keep their pupae in the open and count on being able to collect the adults before they have flown away. The pupae are best kept in a shady place so the butterflies will remain calm after hatching and will not flap and damage their wings. The first thing the newly born butterflies do is sit quietly to dry its wings. It will take three to four hours.

Once the butterfly is ready to takes its wings, the ever watching farmer will catch it with a thorax and inject a small amount of poison to its body. Sometimes boiling water also will be injected. As butterflies are very delicate to stand handling, they will be carefully downed in to a killing jar protected with cotton or wool inside. But the cotton also is soaked with the same killer poison, ethyl acetate. This way they are kept for ten minutes. The dead butterflies are collected and covered with paper envelopes. Throughout the process not even a brushing of fingers against the wings is allowable. Then these envelops are collected in a tray and put in the sun for four days to dry. Then the envelopes are safely transferred to an airtight storage box. Once enough specimens are collected, they will be transferred to a thick box strewn by naphthalene crystals. Then the box of carefully killed and preserved butterflies is shipped to its prospective customers.
Europe and North America are the main customers. Butterflies are being purchased for research purposes, for gardens and to add regalia to special occasions like weddings. The greeners are happy because the business helps the exotic indigenous butterflies from extinction and reduces deforestation, earlier, most of the butterfly farmers were depending the forest for their sustenance. The natural breeding place of butterflies is thus protected. And they gleefully add that since pollination is the very basic contribution to nature, the farming causes a wealthy and healthy ecosystem