- Joined
- Jun 8, 2006
- Messages
- 1,381
Well, somehow I managed to mate 13 or 14 for sure adult females and attempted a few questionables and I was not able to take the time to setup a good photo shoot for any of them. I havent had the time and i was forced to send ALL my males through the meat grinder because they were dying left and right. BTW...in the end most of the males that were either introduced once or placed in with another female for a second or third go became quick snacks. A couple were able to hang around until they expired naturally ...and I believe I have 3 or 4 still hanging on. One died from drowning ...got sucked into a puddle of condensation. All the rest of my males died (probablly around 10 or so) while still in their sling cups.
Its not easy doing this with one sac. I had to make a lot guesses when it comes to who to powerfeed and who gets held back. Getting a group of females to pass up their male siblings is not only guess work, but truely a fight against the natural order of things. There is an obvious reason that males tend to mature at a faster rate ...its to get their butts out into the world to find and mate with new blood. Nature does seem to allow for some possible inbreeding within each brood ...early bloomer fems and late bloomer males most likely often meet up with eachother, but as a whole, IMO most inbreeding that happens in nature occures between siblings from different sacs and probably doesnt happen as much in well populated areas.
So...did I successfully mate at least a few of these females? I do believe so ...some even mated with two or three males... something that my local hesps never seem to want to do. But, so far...no sac action!
Today. I allowed my room to get down to 65F and then i let it slowly rise to around 73F. I will crank the heat back up before sunrise, when I crawl back into my coffin for my morning nap.
I'll be surprised and surely bummed if I end up with nil sacs and I'll have to reevaluate what I think I know about these things.
Anyway...
Some pics of three of the pairings that i at least snapped some shots off of.
Ok, the fem I call Stubs. She was the only one that I at least placed into an enclosure for some decent shots ...but I was too lazy to change the background and I just left the white one I had setup for another subject. Great example of potentially decent pics washed out because of troublesome metering...
1st some solo shots ...feeding and preping the day before.
She is full of dust in these because she was in an open-faced enclosure ...and she decided to explore my room for most of the day. Mostly webbed up a 4 to 6' area between the enclosure, my camera/tripod and other enclosures nearby. Tempts me to try and let one just wonder the room ...to see where she will decide to settle in ...may be an interesting experiment.
The male... he was the least colorfull and i have to admit he was the dog of the bunch when it comes to markings...but he was the largest by far.
Intro was rough at first. Look how close she came to snagging this slippery stud!
He, out of all of them did the most web manipulation. He build a nice bridge between his little home base and her. (communications pipeline? eh? ) And he eventually webbed up a "wall" that was attached to that. A couple of the pics show it somewhat ok.
Wish I was paying attention when the kill happened. Could have been some interesting pics. Anyway ...as you can see, the murderous b*tch took her man to the cleaners.
Ok...some very poor shots of another pairing. The key to shooting through jars is to shoot from further back. Webbing and other crap will become more in focus and cause problems, but the subject matter will also come out much more in focus, along with less distortion from the glass and will have a better depth of field. Well, anyway...obviously, I need to start following my own advice, because with these I was way too close. :?
And most of these are a repost ...but with a few added...
Its not easy doing this with one sac. I had to make a lot guesses when it comes to who to powerfeed and who gets held back. Getting a group of females to pass up their male siblings is not only guess work, but truely a fight against the natural order of things. There is an obvious reason that males tend to mature at a faster rate ...its to get their butts out into the world to find and mate with new blood. Nature does seem to allow for some possible inbreeding within each brood ...early bloomer fems and late bloomer males most likely often meet up with eachother, but as a whole, IMO most inbreeding that happens in nature occures between siblings from different sacs and probably doesnt happen as much in well populated areas.
So...did I successfully mate at least a few of these females? I do believe so ...some even mated with two or three males... something that my local hesps never seem to want to do. But, so far...no sac action!
Today. I allowed my room to get down to 65F and then i let it slowly rise to around 73F. I will crank the heat back up before sunrise, when I crawl back into my coffin for my morning nap.
I'll be surprised and surely bummed if I end up with nil sacs and I'll have to reevaluate what I think I know about these things.
Anyway...
Some pics of three of the pairings that i at least snapped some shots off of.
Ok, the fem I call Stubs. She was the only one that I at least placed into an enclosure for some decent shots ...but I was too lazy to change the background and I just left the white one I had setup for another subject. Great example of potentially decent pics washed out because of troublesome metering...
1st some solo shots ...feeding and preping the day before.
She is full of dust in these because she was in an open-faced enclosure ...and she decided to explore my room for most of the day. Mostly webbed up a 4 to 6' area between the enclosure, my camera/tripod and other enclosures nearby. Tempts me to try and let one just wonder the room ...to see where she will decide to settle in ...may be an interesting experiment.
The male... he was the least colorfull and i have to admit he was the dog of the bunch when it comes to markings...but he was the largest by far.
Intro was rough at first. Look how close she came to snagging this slippery stud!
He, out of all of them did the most web manipulation. He build a nice bridge between his little home base and her. (communications pipeline? eh? ) And he eventually webbed up a "wall" that was attached to that. A couple of the pics show it somewhat ok.
Wish I was paying attention when the kill happened. Could have been some interesting pics. Anyway ...as you can see, the murderous b*tch took her man to the cleaners.
Ok...some very poor shots of another pairing. The key to shooting through jars is to shoot from further back. Webbing and other crap will become more in focus and cause problems, but the subject matter will also come out much more in focus, along with less distortion from the glass and will have a better depth of field. Well, anyway...obviously, I need to start following my own advice, because with these I was way too close. :?
And most of these are a repost ...but with a few added...