praying mantis egg sac

[Ohdanigirl]

Has anybody here hatched one of these. Any recs? What do need to buy for when they hatch. What enclosure is best, only keeping 1-3, and releasing the rest. Thanks.

 

Danielle

[mo2]

Has anybody here hatched one of these. Any recs? What do need to buy for when they hatch. What enclosure is best, only keeping 1-3, and releasing the rest. Thanks.

 

Danielle

 

 

We kept them in one of those mesh butterfly enclosures and they did fine. However, I had a hard time finding anthing to feed them. Eventually we had to make several trips to the nearest pet store (which was 45 minutes away) to buy fruit flies. As they get bigger, they can eat bigger bugs that you can easily find around the yard.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We hatched 2. We just kept them in the container the egg sacks came in. But when they hatched we let them eat each other until the got bigger then fed them to our lizard :blushing:

[MeanestMomInMidwest]

We kept the egg sac in a big pickle jar on a stick with some leaves. When we noticed the babies, we let most go in the garden and kept a couple. We didn't have much luck with them in captivity. We (and by "we" I don't mean "me") have, however, captured big ones and let them roam around in the house. They've lasted a couple of months, but I don't recommend it.

[Ohdanigirl]

We hatched 2. We just kept them in the container the egg sacks came in. But when they hatched we let them eat each other until the got bigger then fed them to our lizard :blushing:

 

LOL:lol:

[Sunkirst]

Eventually we had to make several trips to the nearest pet store (which was 45 minutes away) to buy fruit flies.

 

Put a piece of banana or other ripe fruit in a saucer and expose it to the fruit flies. They will lay eggs on the ripe fruit, and voila, a self sustaining fruit fly colony (if you replenish the fruit from time to time).

I've read instructions for terrariums with a fruit fly->preying mantis (or fruit fly->spider, or fruit fly->venus fly trap) food chain, I think the book was something like "Bottle Biology." They recommended only keeping one mantis and releasing it as it grew (as its appetite outpaces the fruit fly reproduction!).

[NanceXToo]

This is interesting since we have a live egg case now; we're waiting for them to hatch. It will probably be a few weeks though for us. We've only had it for a few days (maybe 4 or 5 days) and it said that they should hatch in 3-6 weeks after we got it.

 

We put the egg case into a mesh thing similar to a butterfly habitat, as someone else said.

 

I read that you can feed them something like "pinhead crickets" from a bait or pet store if you can't catch anything small enough to feed them when they are very little.

 

I'll have to see how it goes when our time comes!

[nd293]

We found an egg sac, and dh left it in an unsealed container for me to deal with, then went away. I had other things to deal with, and soon that included hundreds of teeny tiny praying mantises all over my kitchen counter... We only kept 5 or so, and tried feeding them aphids, but it didn't work, and they died. If I were to do it again, and wanted to raise a couple to adult stage, I'd probably let them eat each other. Yuck.

[carlychan]

You will need a container with LITTLE holes. They are pretty tiny little things when they hatch. You should order some fruit flies right before you expect them to hatch. You could order right when they hatch, but you will have to give them water (cotton balls dipped in water). Just get those fruit flies fast! WE didn't have much luck keeping them alive. However, some perished thanks to my 2 year old...:001_huh: