From Cornelius du Plessis, NY, USA

Hi Nigel,

We have had 90 F temperatures on and off the last couple weeks here in NY, normally would start running into problems,but this year farming max monarch/hydroponic system and following your SOP still harvesting batches of healthy disease free monarch pupa as can be-seen in this pop up ,making farming butterflies fun.thanks again!!

Cornelius.
July 2012

Cornelius Du Plessis with pop-up cage containing
pupae raised using the Maximum Monarchs method!

(see also Cornelius' earlier comment here.)

From Kay in Perth, Australia

Nigel, Linda and crew.

Thank you for all the work you have put into this work shop.

It has been wonderful learning experience and I have already put some of the information into action.

Thanks
Kaye Higgins,
Butterfly Dreams
12 Cobden Street
Bayswater 6053
Perth Western Australia
Website: www.digitalstorm.com.au/butterfly

From Manel in Barcelona, Spain

Hi Nigel and all,

I have to say thank you so much for such a fantastic seminar. I have now the first results in my experience with the new method, and I have to say that are completely positives.

I took advantage some weeks before, and I planted the milkweeds. I tried with 100-120 caterpillars 3 weeks before, and now the first monarch caterpillars are pupae in the top of the cage as you said, and I didn't see a dead one, so when all finish in pupae, I will confirm if finally I got a 100% of success.

It has been fantastic because I feel that with the necessary food plant and the few dedication I spent, I could be raising large quantities that with traditional methods I can't imagine to raise for myself. Of course, I will use the method with other food plants and species.

Thanks Nigel, Linda and Paul for an amazing seminar. I can say that the $50 are the best investment for my business that I have done!

Waiting for the next seminar,

Manel Moreno.

From John Wilchynski, Florida

Hello,

Thanks for this great course. It has been such a pleasure to read all this great information after a hard days works. Please put my name and email on the World Wide Butterfly group list.

Thank You

John Wilchynski.

From Richard Charlwood, Australia

Thanks so much Nigel, Linda and Paul for all your time, effort and great advice!

Thanks to everyone for sharing so much.

I've learnt heaps and realise that getting to know these wonderful creatures is a lifelong journey.

Sincerely, Richard.

From Jacqui Knight, New Zealand

Thank you so much Nigel, Linda and Paul - it's been most rewarding.

I very much appreciate all the effort you've put in to this - I've so enjoyed it. I have printed out all the papers and hope to review the information often as I search for answers to make my/our efforts more simple, structured, successful and sustainable.

Thank you again.

Jacqui

From Bill Robinson, South Carolina

Linda, Nigel and Paul thank you so much for your effort; the course has been very educational.

Bill Robinson

From Barbara Dorf, Texas

Thank you so much for all of your help & all of the wonderfully valuable information.

Barbara

From David Foster, Kansas

Nigel,

I have your books and cd and was impressed with your experience and knowledge. With this course you have outdone yourself. The depth of your expertise is impressive, but to me the most impressive part is your willingness to share with everyone else.

We are making many changes here are somewhat in a start up mode at this point. I don't have any questions at the moment for you, but I am sure I will in the future and I hope you are as willing to share your knowledge then.

Thanks again to you, Linda, Paul and everyone who has asked questions and offered their knowledge. As a current board member of IBBA it is good to see the interest and cooperation among the

"butterfly community".

Thanks,

David Foster

Schoolhouse Aquatics / Midwest Butterflies
4424 U. S. Hwy 59
Cummings, KS 66016

From David Tilton, North Carolina

Hi Linda,

Thanks for taking the time to follow up. The information received just in the first two days has been amazingly invaluable. I’m afraid if I tell you how I really feel about the value of this workshop, that you will want several hundred more dollars for it.

Take care,
David Tilton
Willow Spring, North Carolina, USA

From Melanie and Terry McCarthy, Massachusetts

Nigel,

My husband and I send sincere thanks to you, Linda and Paul for the fabulous on-line course. I think you were up 24 hours a day keeping up with all the questions and discussions. It was wonderful that others shared . . . and in so much detail. This weekend I need to put all those discussions and the valuable curriculum you put together into a folder on my computer and back it up!

This is our 14th year in rearing butterflies and I learned more from your recent course than in all those 14 years combined . . . because as anyone knows, we can do things the hard way every year. So many time saving methods, that is what truly helped. I loved discussing the interesting 'traits' of the different species, that's one of my favorite things to do.

Your course has motivated me to raise mourning cloaks again. In a few years . . . when the rest of my life slows a bit. Don't have an empty nest yet. One more to finish his last year in college!

Thank you all so much and special thanks to those who worked behind the scenes as well, Paul and Linda. Everything was beautifully presented - and so well organized, making it easy to learn in a methodical way.

Thanks again. Love,

Melanie and Terry

The Monarchy
Massachusetts

From Chad Limes, Florida

Hello Nigel,

My name is Chad Limes and I have a small butterfly farm here in Florida. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you very much for not only this Max Monarchs but also your books you've written along with your articles and post. I'm very diligent reading anything that you sign your name too. I'm very grateful for you sharing your experience and knowledge of raising butterflies, you've been personally responsible for a lot of our success in raising monarchs. I haven't had much to say on the list and haven't had questions for you because of the detail you provide is so good that all the answers are in your writing. That and we focus on retail sales and this is our busy season and I don't have a lot of extra time.

I've had a lot of fun learning different ways of breeding and it was great reading the MM and finding that we're doing a lot of the things that you've shared. My favorite is feeding the butterflies with the clips. I've attached a pic of our first trial and it was very successful the first time. (I very rarely have success at anything the first time)

Last year we did the pots in the ground (cutting out the bottom) with sleeves and it worked great until the Florida summer melt down, and wow, did it melt down. I was glad to see you mention the FL melt down a couple times in the MM because it took me a few years to figure out that was my problem once summer hit full force.

It's summer time now in FL and so far we haven't melted down yet. We have to bring things inside and do totes (I really don't like totes) but its' necessary this time of year. We still start outside in the nets you suggest (the white ones) and bring them inside in the 4th & 5th instar into totes. It seems to be really working well (so far). I'd like to see if I can get a bulk order of the black nets you use. Once we slow down a little I'll look into.

I've had the opportunity to thank Linda but wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and thank you for the generosity of sharing your knowledge. I'm very grateful for your writings and can't thank you enough. Our business is doing very well and continuing to grow every year. I really can't say enough how big of an influence you've been in our success.

Thank you,

Chad Limes

A Butterfly Release Company, Inc.
Winter Park, Fl
(407) 754-2353
www.butterflyreleasecompany.com
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From: Chad Limes

From: Tatia Veltkamp

Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011
To: wwbbf@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Nigel's Max growing System

Nigel,

I too have just emerged my last monarch from the first trial with your system and I have never seen such big monarchs with this! I couldn’t decide if the monarchs were big because I’d been working with the tiny PLs for awhile or if they are really big. I’ve decided they are really big! It’s much different than growing on cut plants and I love the lack of work it produced for me!

So, now I’m on to hopefully getting some pairings today and tomorrow and start over again!

Thanks, Nigel, for this new system!

Tatia

From Cornelius du Plessis

Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011
To: wwbbf@googlegroups.com
Subject: Trials with Nigel's Max growing System

Hi Nigel,

We're getting to the end of our Monarch growing season in NY and had used your system and an adaptaion of it successfully the second half of our season, we will be tagging and releasing close to 500 butterflies this weekend all grown using your system ,so the first Max growing System Monarchs will start their journey to Mexico this weekend!!

We will also start getting ready for our journey in a couple of weeks to our ranchette in Florida where we had last season built the infra structure to start farming butterflies this winter season.

We never liked farming AD and would like to start experimenting with a Max growing system for painted ladies while in Florida,maybe growing milk thistle, mallow,plantain or any host plant that would fit fast turn around time.

Also do the same for peacocks, buckeyes and the passion vine species, think it could be a lot of fun and also beneficial to all on the list but will only be able to do this with a lot of input from you. The goal would be to breed about 100 of each specie using the Max Grow system.

So Nigel, what do you think about it? All this information could then be used for your new manuals!

Regards,
Cornelius