Madison Molted

Madison molted today!  Here are a few pics. Everything is else going well. All eating and having fun and growing well.

Kennedy molted

Kennedy molted late last night or early this morning. Here are a few pics of the bigger and better Kennedy. Again a pic in my hand so you can compare size a little bit, I wish I could get them to stand still on a ruler! HA HA!  Also I have noticed every time I go to take a picture these little stinkers look away, at least it feels like that.

Talked to the boy across the street that also has a mantis from our yard. He named it Jinx or Jinks not sure how he is spelling it, and not Michelle as I first thought. He said his has molted once already. I'll have to get him to bring his over so I can get some pictures to share.

PICTURES!!!!

Took a few more pictures, holding them in my hands for size reference. Reagan ran up my arm, down my back up my neck before Ella finally caught her! It was interesting to say the least.

Nixon molted!

Nixon molted last night. Here are a few pics of the bigger Nixon and the skin he molted out of. Yes, that's MY hand holding him, made a point today to hold them all, I am not afraid of them but I have an issue with texture and things that feel weird and they are a bit tickly/pokey to hold!

Introducing Madison

Meet Madison....our latest (and last I think) little friend. She's joined Reagan, Kennedy and Nixon  We finally found a brown one! Sorry for the bit of a blurry pic, I got stung by a bee yesterday and am having an icky reaction and the benadryl I am taking is making me loopy so I just wanted to snap something and call it a night. I promise more pics of all 4 coming soon. Everything else is doing great. All eating, all seem happy, no molts yet.

7/14/2014 update

Just a quick update. Today we found a green female and a brown mantis in our tree out front. I couldn't catch the brown one fast enough to get it sexed or have the chance to keep it. Darn the luck.

All is well on our little little buggies, all eating, no one molting yet but they are getting used to being inside in a container and tend to not try to escape as much now. We will be looking to upgrade their enclosures after their next molt I think.

Throwback pics

So as I said I will post old pictures of our mantis Mom and Dad from time to time and our ootheca or ooth (egg mass) laying from last year. Here are a bunch of pictures of Trixie, she is the mom and as you can see in one of the pictures she got super fat when she was full of eggs. I mated her with 2 males. Ned and Ed.

Trixie mated with Ed 9/21/13 and ate him right after! (Actually a first for any of my females) and Ed mated with her 9/27/13 and she also ate him, actually as gross as it sounds she ate his upper half at the start of the mating and kept going! Ewwwww.

She laid ooths on 9/26/13, 10/8/13, 12/27/13, 11/11/13, 11/25/13 and 12/9/13.  Ooths 1-3 hatched after being wintered outside on 5/25/2014, I placed the other 3 ooths in my crepe myrtles out front, one (number 6) was damaged over the winter and never hatched. I believe 4 and 5 probably hatched but can not confirm as they are so deep in my tree I can no longer find them thanks to all the flowers and leaves.

Reagan, Kennedy and Nixon are doing great, no one has molted yet but they are big eaters and very active. This evening we spent time with a 3 of Ella's friends, 2 of them boys who insisted on finding a mantis in one of my crepe myrtles to take home with them. Found them they did! And many others. They have promised me they will not come get more or mess with the ones left out there so nature can do its work. They were about the size of ours, one named his Michelle the other Godzilla bug. I told them how to care for them and made them promise if they got tired of them or they couldn't take care of them to come put them back in my trees.

Also found one beautiful brown one that was the same size as ours, but one boy injured it trying to catch it in haste, so we had to have a talk about how to handle them as well. Found another bigger brown one on the eve of the house, and I was going to catch it, really felt it was female just by the shape but she was too fast for me, found another female while looking for that one but she was also too fast. I like to gently coax them into a jar and not just grab at them when I catch them, seems nicer and less chance of injury like the one the boy hurt. 

Pictured is Alex, we tried to keep him/her originally but turned out she was too tiny for me to find a decent food source for without ordering fruit flies so we let her go to grow some more. You can see how big she is compared to Ella's fingers (who is almost 10 so good size hands) I have seen him/her several times in my chocolate mint plant where we released him/her and he/she comes to visit me when I am in the garden.So very sweet, haven't seen Alex in a few days hope things are ok. 

July 10, 2014

Pics of our little alien bugs! They were really fast so our pics are not the best but I wanted to get something up. They are each a little over an inch to maybe an inch and a half long, will try to measure once they are closer to or from a molt when they slow down a bit. They are living in toss away storage container, as you can see in one of the pictures we have them stacked, but  just for the sake of getting them all in one picture since most of the air holes are in the lids we store them separately.We will upgrade the size of the container when they get a little bigger, but for now its perfect size, you don't want them having too much room or it makes it harder for them to find their food.  Still not sure on the sex of them yet, counting segments this young is hard, and it makes me thing we have all males! I sure hope not. Its easier to tell when they are adults, just due to the body shape. Females a have fat wide bodies and boys have skinny bodies pretty much all one size from the head down.

Welcome to our blog!

Hi welcome to our blog! We are making this blog so you can follow along with us as our praying mantis grow. We currently have 3 of them. Nixon (found July 7 2014), Reagan and Kennedy (both found July 9 2014). They are young mantis, with a few molts to go before they become adults. Last year we raised and mated their parents Trixie and two dad's Ed and Fred. We had 6 egg casings of which we are sure 3 hatched, and we believe more did but they are hiding in our trees out front so we can't find them to see. Last year we took lots of notes and pictures during our mating and egg laying process, which we will share here with a throwback post title and we will share updates and photos of the 3 we are currently raising. We winter our eggs outside and allow them to hatch before we take in new ones for the year. Our mantis are primarily Carolina mantis.

So a little about us. We live in Oklahoma.  My daughter Ella is closing in on ten years old and will soon be in the 4th grade. She helps me (mom aka Lori) with our little buggy friends. 

This is our public record of our mantis experience for all to see. No pictures with this first post, as 2 of our little guys (I think male) are new and I don't want to bother them for a day or so. 

Look for updates on how they are doing, what they are eating, how big they are growing, when they molt etc! Thanks for following along.