RAISING MONARCHS

Out in the wild, less than 10% of monarch butterfly eggs hatch into an adult butterfly compared to the 90% lucky enough to be cared for by Kathy Van Ommeren of Owatonna.
Van Ommeren said she has assisted more than 10,000 monarch butterflies hatch over the past 20 years – 700 so far this summer, with another 300 expected to take flight by summer’s end.
The plight of the orange-and-black-winged butterfly may be well-known today, but Van Ommeren started raising them before their numbers began to dwindle dramatically.
“I love to educate people about God’s creation and the wonder of it,” said Von Ommeren, a retired accountant.
Monarchs return to Minnesota each spring from the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. But they aren’t the same monarchs that left here in the fall. Given their short life cycle, it takes four generations of monarchs to make the 2,000-plus mile trek.
Her hobby consumes about 20 hours each week between late May and late August. After collecting the eggs, Van Ommeren puts each one in its own little hatchery - a clear cup with a breathable mesh covering - where it stays until it hatches and can fly.
Much of her time is spent gathering milkweed, the only plant a monarch caterpillar will eat.
“We don’t have enough milkweed in the yard,” she said. “Caterpillars are hefty eaters and eat three to four, 4-inch leaves per day.”
The four stages of the monarch butterfly life cycle are the egg, the larvae (caterpillar), the pupa (chrysalis), and the adult butterfly. It takes about 30 days for the monarch to develop from egg to adult.
“If we go somewhere overnight, we have to bring them and the milkweed,” said Van Ommeren. For example, during a trip to northern Minnesota in June, she left home with about 400 eggs in their containers.
“I came home with 600 eggs,” she said, adding that the eggs themselves are smaller than a pinhead and found on the bottom side of milkweed leaves. The eggs become caterpillars about four days after they are laid.
“We feed them and clean out their cups each night,” said Van Ommeren. “Each caterpillar sheds its skin five times before becoming a chrysalis (where it transitions to a butterfly that can fly).”
Van Ommeren recently took two dozen chrysalis to church for the children’s sermon.
“I might as well let someone else enjoy them,” she said, adding that she loves hearing people’s stories about the monarch chrysalises she’s given them to hatch.
“Some people even name them.”
Ommeren’s monarch chrysalises will be on display at the Steele County Fair in the recently renamed Great Outdoors building. In the past, the Friends of Rice Lake State Park sold them as a fundraiser at the fair.
“We will have it timed, so three or four butterflies emerge from the chrysalis each day of the fair,” she said.
Another outlet for Van Ommeren’s monarch butterflies in the past has been the Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) program’s annual fundraiser. But that too is coming to an end.
“This is the last year I’m going to sell chrysalises.”
Ommeren said she and her husband, Marv, are both retired and would like to travel more.