Woodlice!

[Miss Lily]

Monty loves woodlice, but I don't like to give him too many straight from outside. A few weeks ago I collected a load of them from my Mum's garden, but they seem in no hurry to breed! Is there anything I can do to help things along and speed them up maybe? How long do you need to keep them inside to flush their systems through?

 

[pssh]

It's best to only feed CB ones. The females have a brood pouch under their bellies and hold their babies in it until they are ready to be released. If you pick some up I bet you can see them. If you want, you can poke and prod them until a female releases the babies early (if her brood pouch if very full and looks like it has babies in it.) If it is yellow, then they are just eggs and you shouldn't do so. But they will drop the babies early if they are stressed enough. I find that holding them between my fingers and rolling them around a little will cause the mother to release the babies.

 

[Miss Lily]

That's interesting! Whereabouts on the belly is it? I shall have to go and look at a few of mine. I have some that are quite large in size now.

 

[pssh]

Usually the whole belly. Many larger species will have as much as 60-100 babies under there, so they end up looking very, very full by the end of it all.

 

[Miss Lily]

Thanks! I'll check mine out!

 

[sandrachameleon]

It takes a year to get a colony going.
If you press the mother to release the babies from the pouch too soon, they'll just die

You cannot flush their systems - they wall off the contaminents within themselves.

 

[pssh]

Mine never die when I force the babies out as long as they are fully developed. The way I (accidentally) found out how to do it, by gently rolling them around, seems to only make the really, really full pouches release the babies.