Live Cup of 5 Painted Lady Caterpillars to Grow Butterflies Kit - Ready to Ship Now

We have a special Easter tradition in our home that helps us welcome spring while also honoring loved ones we’ve lost. Every year, the Easter bunny brings my daughter caterpillars this is our fourth year doing it, and it means so much to us. Our first and second sets came from this company, and after trying another company last year (which unfortunately sent fewer caterpillars and even had a couple arrive not alive), it really showed us the difference in quality and care. Clearwater has always gone above and beyond they even include an extra caterpillar if not two extra!!! which is such a thoughtful touch. Every single one we’ve received has successfully turned into a butterfly, and that consistency means everything to us. This is truly an amazing company, and we won’t be going anywhere else again! Cannot wait to give these to my little we love when we get to release them!

This was such a fun an educational way to teach my 5 year old about butterflies. We had 7 come in our container so that was cool. It is definitely worth the money especially since we got more than expected. They are also so tiny when you get them

Use these ever year in the classroom

Great learning material! It's fun to watch the whole process from a tiny caterpillar to beautiful butterflies. Everything is provided, well written instructions (even for kids to understand and follow). We had an amazing educational experience. Thank you.

I forgot to write a review, but as I'm buying caterpillars again soon I thought I should, this has disturbed me for a while. I bought these in 2020, and I bought 2 cups of 5 caterpillars. When they arrived, there were only 8 caterpillars in the cups, and one was smaller than the rest and sickly. The sickly one died as small, under-developed caterpillar long after the others pupated and the butterflies died after a few weeks. So, that had me down to 7/10 caterpillars that were promised. The cups they come in are so small they don't have a lot of room when they get big, and the ones that turned into chrysalids first in these cups were cannibalized by the ones that were still hungry caterpillars even though there was plenty of food left; the 5 caterpillars need to be shipped in 2 cups rather than 1 cup. 2 more caterpillars were completely killed/cannibalized in their chrysalids (1 in each cup) and 2 more were munched on to the point that one came out of the cocoon as a mutated butterfly the size of a dime, and the other's abdomen was short, it's wings were unable to unfold, and it died a few days after hatching despite my best efforts. So, the end result after paying for 10 was 3 butterflies that were normal. My intention was to breed the butterflies, so I was VERY lucky that there was a female amongst them. I ended up raising about 700 butterflies last year from the original 3 butterflies that survived this disaster, and I made sure to use bigger containers for the food (I bought powdered diet that you can rehydrate from another company, very easy to use) and only put one or two caterpillars per cup and separated them if one was too much bigger than the other. I did have success, but about 30-50% of every generation of butterflies that survived being a caterpillar and chrysalid hatched out as horribly deformed butterflies that were good for nothing but tossing to fence lizards in my backyard as food. Even the ones that were kept alone with lots of food in a big cup came out deformed, so I know it is not lack of space. The amount of deformed, dime-sized butterflies I got from these was disheartening, and I have never had this problem with other butterfly companies nor when raising and breeding wild caught butterflies; I've done this many times and know what I am doing. This company's painted lady breeding stock must be tainted with a disease or parasite for the mutant vs healthy ratio of adult butterflies to be so high (nevermind the noticeably higher caterpillar and chrysalid mortality rate). Looking back, I shouldn't have released any of the adults I bred because it could have introduced a disease or genetic problem into my local population, but with the pandemic I was just trying to do something to be happy about. Don't buy from this company, and don't breed their caterpillars like I did, I regret introducing these sickly mutants into the wild. I don't get anything out of this review, but I wanted to warn others who might want a bunch of butterflies for their kids or who want to start a breeding project - don't.