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| Curly Haired TarantulaEnclosure Selection Health Feeding BreedingThe Decision to Breed Selecting a Pair Mating Gestation and Incubation Spiderlings The Decision To Breed... The decision to breed Curly Haired Tarantulas is not one which should be made lightly. The pair, eggs, and hatchlings need extensive care and attention to ensure good health and ultimate success. Gravid females need to be well cared for and all hatchlings will need separate enclosures. The long term costs are great and there is little money to be made in re-selling them. Unless you are considering full scale commercial breeding you are almost certainly going to lose money. Breeding spiders is more about the love of reptiles than the money. Things to consider before you start: - Do you have the money to offer proper care to the hatchlings? - Can you commit time to feeding and looking after multiple spiders? - Do you have the necessary experience to deal with anything that might happen? - What are you going to do with the babies? If you’re still willing to give it a go, let’s get started! Selecting a Pair Of all the things you need to breed successfully the most obvious is a male and female pair. Sexing the animals is relatively easy, as males are a fair bit smaller than females and are typically more colourful. Males can be bred once they reach 1.5 years old, while females should be at least 2 years. You should always introduce the male into the females territory, as this is how the process works in the wild. A Sidenote about wild breeding habits: In the wild, breeding is more complex and has many stages. Provided for your interest is a short summary. To skip this and proceed to captive breeding, click here To start, a male who is ready to breed will spin a special web, into which he will deposit a ball of his sperm. He will then collect this sperm, and carry it with him as he seeks out a female. The male will search for the female by scent, and track a trail until he reaches her burrow. Once he arrives, he will enter the burrow and the female will either attack and chase him away, or will accept his approaches. If he thinks she is receptive, he will back slowly out of the burrow enticing her to follow him. Once they reach the edge of the burrow, the male will approach the female carefully and gently touch her with his front legs, then retreat. This is repeated a number of times, during which time he tries to establish if the female is willing to copulate. Copulation involves positioning himself in such a way that he can place his prepared sperm inside the female, at which point he will run away. The female gives chase, and if she were to catch him he would be eaten. Often, if he is in an area where there are places to retreat to and hide then he survives to mate more times with other females. Mating In captivity, the process is simpler. You can introduce the male into the females tank, and if the male is not eaten then the breeding begins. The male will approach the female carefully and gently touch her with his front legs, then retreat. This is repeated a number of times, as with the wild breeding, before copulation begins. Following breeding, the female will usually eat the male. As you can see, the male rarely survives captive breeding, whether copulation is successful or not. Gestation and Incubation The female will produce eggs over the next 8 months, and will spin a web to hold her egg sac. She will guard this for the whole incubation period, and you need not do anything to interfere with the process. Continue to feed the female if she wants it, but to not attempt to move or touch the egg sac. This will take on average 72 days from laying the eggs to hatching. Maintain optimum tank conditions during this time also. Spiderlings The spiderlings which emerge are about 3-5mm in size, very fast, and should be given their own enclosures if possible. Due to the large numbers, they may no get their own enclosure but try to keep as few to an enclosure as is possible. They will initially run and hide, digging themselves into the substrate and can be left in the enclosure for the first few weeks before separating them out. They will not eat until they shed for the first time which will usually be after approximately three weeks. After this time, begin offering small pinhead crickets, large aphids, or wingless fruit flies as described in the feeding section. After they have shed a couple of times and are eating for themselves the mother no longer looks after them and they should be moved out of the mothers tank.
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