About Bird's Butterflies

We're located in Ida township, Michigan in a 1880's farm house which we bought in 1998. We started our greenhouse business Bird's Greenhouse in 2000. We started out by raising greenhouse raspberries and hanging baskets. It didn't take long to realize that flowers were more profitable than raspberries. The greenhouse has been a part time business for us since we both worked full time. A friend of ours was visiting us from North Carolina and mention that our greenhouse would be great for butterflies. We thought about it for a long time but weren't sure if it would work out for us.

In 2005, we were expecting a baby. Mary wanted to stay home with our son Ian, who was born in October. We found that butterflies would provide us with that extra income. We started research on how to raise Monarch butterflies but we still weren't sure if would be right for us. So, we visited our friends in North Carolina to check out their operation. After that visit, that helped us to make the decision to start raising butterflies.