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I have a mamma! A wild Widow that was captured about two weeks ago just hatched an egg sack. I was wondering where to look for equipment geared toward raising the babies and providing housing for the adults. Also any place I could go for information about determining gender, seperating the males and females, feeding, optimal habitats, silking(is that the right term?)would be great. I need info sources of all kinds. Any help is appreciated. Thanks guys!

girl_curious

There are many ways to raise widows, but to make it simple, here's how I do it. First, 2-3 days after the egg cases are laid, I carefully remove them from the "mama jar"..use LONG tweezers....then I place the egg cases in a 1 quart clear plastic jar with a screw on lid...NO AIR HOLES. I try to get some of the web it was hanging in as well...I seem to have a better hatch rate when the egg cases are suspended from the side or top, as opposed to just laying in the bottom of the jar. Next, after the eggs hatch, I will "let nature take it's course" and from the 200-300 per egg case, the strongest will survive by eating the weakest. When I'm down to about 20 spiderlings, they're big enough to tell apart...the females will have much larger bodies, the males longer legs. Place them into individual jars and feed small things like fruit flies, etc...after they've had time to make their web....usually a day or so. I wait until they are about the size of...1/4 of a pea before I move them again into a more permanant container with air holes.. Hope this helps, be carful...ECO

>>There are many ways to raise widows, but to make it simple, here's how I do it. First, 2-3 days after the egg cases are laid, I carefully remove them from the "mama jar"..use LONG tweezers....then I place the egg cases in a 1 quart clear plastic jar with a screw on lid...NO AIR HOLES. I try to get some of the web it was hanging in as well...I seem to have a better hatch rate when the egg cases are suspended from the side or top, as opposed to just laying in the bottom of the jar. Next, after the eggs hatch, I will "let nature take it's course" and from the 200-300 per egg case, the strongest will survive by eating the weakest. When I'm down to about 20 spiderlings, they're big enough to tell apart...the females will have much larger bodies, the males longer legs. Place them into individual jars and feed small things like fruit flies, etc...after they've had time to make their web....usually a day or so. I wait until they are about the size of...1/4 of a pea before I move them again into a more permanant container with air holes.. Hope this helps, be carful...ECO

I agree strongly with this method of letting nature take its course and weed out the weakest of the lot. I've tried other methods, but without much success. I often set egg sacs up in old 2 or 4 quart size 'snack food' plastic jars with lots of twigs stacked around at various heights. Once the eggs hatch, I leave them alone for a week before starting to throw food in (fruit flies mainly and eventually pinhead & 1/8" crickets). Between the fruit flies and letting the stronger spiderlings cull out the weaker/none too bright individuals I have much better survival rates with the survivors (compared to separating them out each into their own individual vial and raising that way). Once the spiders are up to eating 1/4" crickets then I'll separate them out into their individual quart size jars with screen lids. By then they will have whittled their numbers down to about a dozen. I've got western and northern widows right now that are going to be transferred to their own jars this week.

This year with some of my northern widows, I am working on another method so as to get a higher number of surviving spiderlings from an individual egg sac, but still also allowing nature to work its magic on culling the weaker out. I'm using small plastic 3oz vials and putting 5 spiderlings into them. I'm still feeding them tiny crickets and fruit flies, but of the five spiderlings in each vial one will ultimately survive.
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Wyvern