Separating Spiderlings from Momma Wolf Spider

[ForTheWeasel]

A little while back, I caught a nicely sized wolf spider and decided to keep her. It was easy-going for a while; she was ravenous enough to accept hand-feeding, even.

Then came the eggsac.

Not sure if I wanted to deal with an explosion of spiderbabies in the same container as mom, I first tried to separate the sac from her with a paintbrush. She responded by biting the brush, grabbing the eggsac in her fangs, and running the hell off. Well.. okay. That was fine, I supposed. As far as I knew, it was possible that wolf spiders might actually NEED maternal care. The new plan, after seeing that she had decided to reattach the eggsac instead of being stressed into eating it, was to separate them after they left her back.

...I had no idea that they would do this in such a staggered manner.

There are babies everywhere! Everywhere! But there are still otherbabies all over her back. I haven't seen any cannibalistic behavior yet; in fact, some of the babies that have already left her actually COME BACK during feeding time, nibbling at at her kill while and after she's eating it. She doesn't seem bothered by this yet.



So.. when is the best time/way to deal with this? Should I take her and her backbabies away from the free-roaming babies, hoping that disturbing her doesn't cause an unmanageable explosion of panicked spiderlings? Should I just wait until they're all off of her back? Should I (oh god) meticulously rehome every free-roaming baby instead of moving the mother at all?

 

[loxoscelesfear]

my lazy way: leave the kids w/ mom. collect them up as they disperse. seems meticulous but really doesn't take much time. they don't disperse all @ once. put babies in tiny deli cups (several per cup). if it is a native spider turn them loose if you choose to do so. out of 100 babies i have raised 25 to adulthood from the last big mom i had. some just die and yes they do eat each other. offer crushed cricket parts for food. mist couple times a week.

 

[xStainD]

I had a female lay a sac a few months ago. I waited til all of the babies were off of her back, separated the mom and a few I wanted to keep then put the open container in the woods behind my house. All of the babies were gone by morning.

 

[KerrySchell]

Wolf spider baby help!!

So I could not figure out how to post a new thread and this to me at least is an emergency. I have been watching a wolf spider in my basement names it and everything. I had to rename it after noticing it had an egg sac. I noticed it caught in a cob web the other day and freed it, only to discover this morning it was in a spider web, and bitten i promptly removed it but it was to late. How do I save the babies?! Do we have a toy spider sub as mum? Do we cut open the egg sac? PLEASE HELP!