fertile ooth

[lukeis4]

hello all you mantis fans i have a question for you all

how can you tell if a ooth is fertile my egyptian mantis has now laid 4 ooths i am keeping them in container with the relevent care to hatch, but i dont know for certain if they are going to hatch i contacted the pet store and he said he has no idea if she has been mated or if she was cought in the wild as he buy in from a supplier

so is there any way of telling if it is fertile or will i just have to wait n hope for the best

i hope you can help me THANK YOU ALL

 

[beckyl92]

hello all you mantis fans i have a question for you all how can you tell if a ooth is fertile my egyptian mantis has now laid 4 ooths i am keeping them in container with the relevent care to hatch, but i dont know for certain if they are going to hatch i contacted the pet store and he said he has no idea if she has been mated or if she was cought in the wild as he buy in from a supplier

so is there any way of telling if it is fertile or will i just have to wait n hope for the best

i hope you can help me THANK YOU ALL

this is just something i found on the internet cause i had a similar problem.

get tiny knife or something sharp and at the very top of the ooth cut a little, if its all crusty or black then its infertile, if some liquid kinda stuff comes out (the eggs) then its fertile. Its pretty hard to do though so its up to you if you wanna do it. Also you are killing a few eggs doing this.

If i was you id just treat them all as if they were fertile and see what happens

 

[Katnapper]

I don't think there is any way you can tell if they are fertile just by looking at them. Knowing the history (if mated) helps a great deal, but even then is not always foolproof. Even "positively" mated females sometimes lay infertile ooths.

I think the cutting into of them might only be useful at least several weeks after laying. I've either cut and/or broken open freshly laid infertile ooths (and ones that were a couple of weeks old also), and they had viscous eggs inside. I knew they were infertile, as the females were not previously mated and had no contact with males. But they will still lay the eggs, they just won't be fertilized and continue develpment into nymphs. I think this is where you can tell by cutting open... when they've reached the stage that they should have developed into nymphs. If fertile when you cut, you'll be able to see the developing nymphs, and if infertile, they will have dried up at that stage. I don't know how long from hatching it takes for the difference to become apparent when you cut into them. Most people only resort to cutting them after the point of suspected hatching has come and gone... after 6 or 8 weeks. At that point is should be fairly obvious.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Like you say, wait and hope for the best! It's not as though they take up a lot of room.

One of the many things that an ooth provides for the eggs is protection against microbial invasion. If you cut the ooth open, you are exposing it to infection, attacks from mites and fly larvae, and who knows what else.

One other thing, though not scientifically proven, may help. If you have a shop in your town that is licensed to sell shrines to the Great Mantis Goddess (Blessed be Her Name), you should be able to find slow-burning ooth-hatching candles. Light one of those before Her shrine, and if it is Her Will that the ooth hatch, then it certainly will, but if not, then not.

Good luck, and don't burn your fingers!

 

[Rick]

this is just something i found on the internet cause i had a similar problem.get tiny knife or something sharp and at the very top of the ooth cut a little, if its all crusty or black then its infertile, if some liquid kinda stuff comes out (the eggs) then its fertile. Its pretty hard to do though so its up to you if you wanna do it. Also you are killing a few eggs doing this.

If i was you id just treat them all as if they were fertile and see what happens

That is not correct. If an ooth is fresh the eggs will look the same as in a fertile one. It takes awhile for the eggs to dry and turn black, a long while. If she was not mated then it is not fertile. If you have waited for several months and nothing has hatched from an ooth you think is fertile then you can cut a very thin slice off one end and have a look. There really is no visual way to tell fertile from infertile because they will look the same.