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I peeled a thin section of one of my incubating ooths to check on the progress. Hopefully this won't hurt the rest of them. I just cannot stand waiting on anything. Well the first egg has what appears to be a fully developed nymph. COmplete with big black eyes. He is moving. Now he is hanging from that piece by a thread. He is still enclosed in the sack though. I think I need to order the fruit flys today!
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Here is the pic, sorry.

>>Here is the pic, sorry.
>>

Well, that photo is too blurry to tell much of anything, but if you ripped the ooth open to take it as it appears, then the answer will be never. You _NEVER_ break open an ootheca until there is absolutely no way that it can possibly produce any hatchlings, such as several months after the last nymphs emerged, or about a year or so since it was laid with no hatchlings.
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Give me Mantises, or give me death!

Hello,
Yeah i agree with you Chris, i feel its cruel to th young nymphs no matter how unpatient you are. I have opened ooths but with a feeling that its a dud and i have so far always been correct not opening any fertile ooths. To me personally thats a terrible wat to "check progress", but to eah its own.

Thanks
Eros JN

Well you're wrong. I have checked that way before and they still hatched. Seen it happen a few times. But it does not matter now. My OTHER ooth hatched last night. It was laid by the female chinese that I still have alive and well. So I have the mother and her babies, which would never happen outdoors. Looks to be about a hundred of them or so and only three casualties. It took this ooth exactly 20 days from the time it was laid until it hatched.

If you feel it's right to tear open incubating oothecas, then no one is going to stop you. Personally, I think it's wrong to try and rush natural hatchings like that, just as you wouldnt want to force open gecko or beardy eggs, but oh well. I just hope you dont get into breeding exotic and rare mantids because they're not quite as expendable as local chinese and carolina mantids. Also, having a mother mantis and the babies doesnt happen in nature for a reason. That reason is because she would obviously eat them, so I'm not sure what exactly you were trying to say, I might have just misinterperted though.

Interesting that the advice to slightly open the ooth came from somebody really respected in the mantis keeping community! Somebody some of you might of bought mantids from! But that is beside the point. I was simply saying that it was interesting that I have mother and babies. Nothing else. Calm down fellas. I killed one baby mantid and the ooth is fine.