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Step 1
Plant many flowers around your garden. Butterflies eat the nectar from flowers. As caterpillars they eat the leaves of the flowers or plants. Butterflies also lay their eggs on the leaves of the plants. This will later be their food once they develop into the caterpillar stage.
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Step 2
Prepare a well ventilated container. To make sure that the butterflies eat, provide them a safe environment to eat well. If you capture the butterfly in its early stages as a caterpillar, have plenty of plant leaves in the container. Take the leaf you found it on along with the other leaves around the plant. Gather leaves from a milkweed plant since most butterflies prefer to eat these particular plants. They will eat and eat until they develop into their third stage of life before adulthood.
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Step 3
Place a plate of ripe fruit outside your home. If you notice there are lot of butterflies around or you just set some free, you can place cut up fruit on a plate and the adult butterflies will gather to eat from it. Do the same for butterflies you have in ventilated containers.
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Step 4
Gather some sap from a tree that is losing its bark. Butterflies like the sweetness of the sap and tend to eat it when available. If you are raising the butterflies, put about a teaspoon of sap onto a plate. Not much is needed for their little bodies.
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Step 5
Cut some grass and put it into a bag. Place the grass on the bottom of the ventilated container that you want to keep the butterfly in. As caterpillars they will eat the stems of the grass more so than when they are butterflies, but this provides nutrition and a variety of taste in their diet.
