Broken Wings & Butterflyhouse

Hi everyone,

Still for my university study, I'm currently breeding a dozen Heliconius charitonius imagi. Actually, I'm faced with another big problem: wings breaking. Surely the butterfly house is a little too cramped and walls too stiff (wire netting). Nearly every butterfly has at least one wing cut off, what seems to become handicaping.

I'm looking for any advice as regards to butterfly-houses best dimensions (however I must have it in a student room, so one side must be shorter than 87 cm), light orientation etc. I think I'll build a new butterfly-house with wintering-cloth as walls, which will be "softer".

Any advice as regards to wings-breaking causes would be also highly appreciated.

Many thanks for your help,

Rémi T.

Hello Rémi,

it is about 15 years ago, i tried to breed Helioconidae at my home. I know at this time that they need very much roomplace. I have decided to build an special room for this Butterflies. In one of the rooms i had build an extension of one of the windows in south-east. May be it works also in the south west direction.

The construnction was built by me with wood and Plexiglas. I did this by extend the free room in front of the window to about 1 meter to the inside. I had no breaken wings at the Heliconidae, because there was no wired nettings. In this cage i have seen one Kopula of an Heliconidae species, nothing more! Better ,than nothing, i think.

Try it, I wish your best

Many greetings,

Franz

Many thanks to all of you. I'll take care notice of your experience Franz. Your video, Papa_Papillon, goes beyond my expectations!

Rémi -- budding "entomo-surgeon".

Franz, I've just realized: what kind of temperatures did you have in your Heliconids house? It seems that reproduction is only observed for temperatures over 27-28°C.

Regards,

Hello Rémi,

in daylight i had up to 32 degrees celsius, in the night about 22 to 24 degrees celsius. The humidity was at 60 to 80 %, that was only possible with an elektric time controlled sprayer, normaly for the use in tropical terrariums.

Best Regards

Franz