welcome

Hello again and thanks again to all who add more quest and to all who answer all my questions... :rock

Well I have another one for those Legends like Jake and Vanessa... When is the best time to add your male to the MF to get the best results... Where in the lifespan should the female be and how many times a year would you say could a female breed???


:chainsaw:

The best person to ask is Hendrik - he is the resident expert when it comes to breeding!

I'll reserve my opinion until I pull our current sac end of June :spider:

With regards to your other queries: It depends on the species, as each one reaches maturity at different sizes and they all have different lifespans - So you'll have to specify the species (or genus at least)

A lot of the timing questions depend on how fresh your male is. If you have a freshly hooked out male that will last for a couple of months, I usually waited or try to get the female to molt. Then I wait about a month after her fresh molt and feed her plenty before I add the male to her enclosure. If your male is on the old side and it has been doing the rounds at a couple of other females, you don't really have the time to wait, so it does not matter where in the females cycle she is, add the male and hope for the best. If your female has been going for a couple of months or even a year without a molt I just think you stand a better chance of having the female molt before producing an egg sac, but I have been proven wrong with females looking like they are going to molt and then dropping an egg sac.

Breeding a female should happen only once a year. After producing an egg sac they loose a lot of body mass and should be rested, fed and hopefully molt before producing another egg sac. Breeding a female directly after she produced a sac might get you a second sac, but I'm sure the quality of those eggs are not going to be the same as the first sac, so your chances of not getting any viable spiderlings from the second sac is possible. On the other hand I have heard of females producing a second sac without being mated if the first sac is pulled early in the eggs cycle. The female might think the eggs were destroyed, so she goes on to produce a second sac.

Well said Jakes,

The P. Irminia & P. Cambridgei are known to double clutch, or drop 2 eggcases with one mating session.

I personally would not even breed a female every year. It does take it's toll on their life span I think. But not only that. Breeding certain species that gives a large amount of eggs to tend to flood the market.

Last year I bred my A. Geniculata, and so did a lot of other people. I got over 1500 perfect healthy slings. Breeding her this year would be really stoopid I think. I woulsd mean that I would have to give them away, and even that would take a serious amount of time to feed them all and tub them. And for what? A big loss. Feeding & tubbing them @ my own costs and the time it takes is insane.

Well, we have discussed when a female is sexually mature.

So that is the first aspect of mating, making sure your female is ready to be breed.

You can mate a female anytime of the year, as the hobbyist/breeder can control the temps.(That is if eskom does not have anything to say about it :lol: )
The female will store the sperm until the time is right to be used.
Also their molting cycle plays keys in mating, Mature females tend to molt once a year.

This is where research would come into play and find out when curtain species starts to breed.
Most spiders start breeding in spring time and by the time summer comes along, the temps are right, the rains have come and there is abundance of food for the the new slings.
Or they would mate in the end of summer and have winter as a cooling down period and drop after winter.


Another thing, females will only drop when they are ready and the environment factors are perfect, like the weather, humidity and things like that. The change of climate normally triggers the response to lay eggs.
If we could mimic the spider environment down to a T we would have much more success with regards to eggs sack being dropped and being successful

We as hobbyist heat our spiders, which in turn leads to some of the females dropping a sack in winter, this can be an issue with power cuts and getting the temps to be perfect.

In essence you can only breed a female once a year.
1st, the whole process of breeding your spider. Dropping an egg sack is very "stressful" on the females body and takes it out of her.
Once a spider has dropped an egg sack then she will not be interested in a male, with that being said only some species are prone to double clutching.
Once a female has molted out she can be mated and breed again, but only if you want to shorten your females life span.

You want to stay away from breeding a female to long after a molt, as this normally means that the female will molt out after her mating.


There is a curtain time in a female cycle where she produces eggs, this is where one gets a phantom sack, that is also why you hear about females that have been mated and drops a sack a week later.

:starwars:

Ah I see, so for the female not to take so much stress it’s better to only breed her once a year.

Ok well four more questions.

#1 Mating my Poecilotheria fasciata, Poecilotheria Regalis And my Brachypelma Albopilosum?
#2 I mated a MF Brachypelma vagans about a month ago... How long would a guestamate be for her to drop a sack?
#3 How do you know when your MF has molted for her last time and how long after that molt would she pass on to spidy Hevan?

Thanks For the info on all my Q's...

Brachypelma albopilosum

Poecilotheria Regalis

Poecilotheria Regalis

Poecilotheria Regalis

heria fasciata

heria fasciata


:tongue: