Semiretired dairy farmer Alvin Brown gets great joy out of watching newly hatched monarch butterflies perch on his arm before taking their first flight.

Maybe it’s a hobby, or busywork or a calling — maybe it’s all three. It’s clear when talking to Brown, who this summer turned 86, that it is a passion to aid the dwindling monarch population by suppling food and temporary housing in an unthreatened environment.

During the last five years, he’s been raising monarchs from his home in New Bremen, Ohio. He collects them as tiny caterpillars, which eventually turn into the white-dotted, orange and black-webbed butterflies known for their great migration. They fly from Mexico mainly to northern Michigan and Canada for their summer breeding season. Not all go that far north, and Brown is providing habitat to lure them in.

“It’s fun, and it’s something to keep me active and thinking,” he says. “I had two brothers who died with dementia. I’m constantly trying to keep my body busy and my brain from rusting up.”

Dairy beginnings

In 1959, Brown started farming with his wife, Ruth (who died in 2008), and went into dairying in 1961 after building a 40-head freestall barn for 17 cows. “I thought that was plenty big to allow for growth,” he says.

But, as three sons and four daughters joined the family, and two sons showed interest in the operation — despite Brown’s urging them to find off-farm work — modifications for growth were needed.

Sons Lou Brown and Alan Brown are now working together with their sons, milking 300 cows.

Brown says he worked as long as he could on the dairy, bottle-feeding calves until his grandsons were old enough to drive and take over those responsibilities.”

Spiking new interest

While they were playing cards, one of Brown’s friends pulled out a couple of pictures of monarch butterflies during migration. Being a nature lover his entire life, he was intrigued. Brown attended a seminar on the monarch’s life cycle and then visited a couple that was already in the process of raising them.

He started with one screen cage, but now has seven. “Mine are a bit different than most, because instead of just putting the milkweed in the cage for them to feed, I put a pan of water in the bottom, drilled a board with several holes and put that overtop,” he explains. “I put the milkweed through the holes to get more life out of it. That way the caterpillars have several days to consume the whole plant.”

So why not let nature do its thing?

It’s estimated that upward of 90% of the monarch population, which is known for pollination, has declined in the past 25 years. There are many factors thought to contribute to this problem, including climate change, removal of the milkweed that commonly lined field ditches and serves as the only food source of caterpillars, synthetic input disturbance, natural predators and other theories.

Conservation groups have petitioned the U.S. government to add the monarch butterfly to the Endangered Species Act list, raising concerns within the agricultural community as it could lead to new management and input regulations.

“Biologists claim the population decline is because no more than 3% to 5% survive in the wild, as larvae are injected with venom or eggs by predators,” he says. “If there is an egg injected, it eventually hatches, kills the caterpillar and then feeds on the carcass. I’m releasing 70% to 71% of what I bring home, and the only reason I’m not at 100% is because some have already been injected. It is satisfying to keep them alive — it’s something worthwhile.”

Let life go on

The key to raising monarchs, besides having a nice patch of milkweed — the only thing monarchs lay their eggs on — is to have red clover growing right by it and blooming by mid-May, according to Brown. “Butterflies have to have nectar right away when they get here,” he explains.

Brown has several patches of milkweed and says he has improved the quality by removing thistles.

When the monarchs arrive, they feed on nectar and then lay eggs on the bottom side of a milkweed leaf. “I spend hours in the milkweed trying to find them,” Brown says. “Any size [caterpillar], I take them home and feed them.”

Eating only milkweed, monarch caterpillars will be almost 2,000 times their original mass within about two to three weeks. About every other day, Brown whisks out the cages. “Well, with all that eating, you know there’s going to be poop,” he says.

“At a certain size, they fasten themselves to the top of the screen as a chrysalis [in pupa stage],” Brown says. About a week or two later, they finish their metamorphosis and emerge as fuly formed monarch butterflies.

“When my great grandchildren see this happening, those little eyes are like diamonds shining,” Brown says. He shares his knowledge and passion with anyone interested, including women’s groups, church groups, school classrooms and visitors to his habitat.

The last generation of monarchs leaves sometime in September. “It depends on the weather, but how they know when it’s time to head out or where they are headed is still a great mystery,” he says.

The last generation makes the entire trek back to Mexico — to the exact region generations before had left in the spring.

More love of nature

The monarch habitat is just the latest for Brown. He’s been hunting, trapping and fishing his whole life, including belonging to a farmer group that hunts coyotes and has claimed 1,359 since 1986.

Come February he gets to work making maple syrup.

In early spring, before the monarchs, he becomes a landlord, as he prepares 128 manufactured gourd houses with louse powder and shavings that will welcome the arrival of purple martins. “They are the friendliest bird in the whole country,” Brown says. “And they eat all kind of insects.”