Behind the visible aspect of the butterfly farm is the hidden operation which consists of extensive breeding facilities. Here, the butterflies are nurtured in a  safe environment, from the time the eggs are laid on the caterpillar food plants or the  so called  ‘host plants’ till the time the young emerge as imago.

Butterfly eggs take three to four days to hatch and then the little caterpillars consume their egg-shells before commencing their eating marathon. Each of them devours two entire pots of food plants on the average and grows up to 1000 times in size before they transform themselves into pupae. Inside their chrysalis, the pupae take two to three weeks to metamorphose into adults. As the butterflies have very short life spans, they urgently have to look for mating partners. These stages of the butterfly life cycle are closely monitored and studied at the farm’s six breeding centers. 

“A butterfly farm cannot afford to have a single day with too few butterflies flying about,” says David. “The breeding stations enable us to constantly replenish our flying population. Sometimes an epidemic can wipe out our entire livestock of certain species at one of the stations, but we always have alternative breeding stations to rely on.”