Chinese mantis project

[Keinelust99]

Hey guys thought you might be interested in seeing my little project
I am hatching 5 Chinese mantis oothecae for gardening
I set up a temporary terrarium to hatch them in and will be releasing them when they are a few weeks old.

I will post progress pictures here for anyone that would like to see
if all of these oothecae hatch I should have quite a few mantids
friends and family will be getting them for their gardening

I'm also contemplating trying to keep a male and a few females to see if I can produce my own ootheca for next season .:yes:

[zactay22]

Always found mantis to be very cool. In Florida you occasionally see one.

[toddnbecka]

You'll want/need a large number of fruit flies to feed the babies for a few weeks when they hatch.

[Keinelust99]

how many cultures do you think I'll need, I found a guy not far from me that sells them

[toddnbecka]

I'd expect at least several hundred hatchlings from 5 oothecae. Number of cultures depends on the size of each, but I think it would be hard to have too many fruit flies to feed them. They will outgrow the fruit flies after several molts.
Why so many? Hard to imagine enough insects to feed that many in your garden. They'll scatter pretty quickly once they're released, adult mantids typically have a "territory" of several square miles.

[Keinelust99]

well Like I said I have a big property with a garden and 3 fruit trees also have friends with the same, I was going to get only 2 or 3 but it was only a couple more bucks for the 5 ,
I figured it would better my odds because not all will hatch and of the ones that do how many mantids would reach a decent size . yes they can each yeild 200 mantids but that is not likely . on saturday night the day after I recieved them in the mail one of the oothaca hatched about 50 mantids I went the next day to get pinhead crickets here are some pictures of them I took today , they seem to be doing pretty good

[Keinelust99]

the pictures are a bit blurry sorry, these little guys are not easy to take pictures of