Stick eggs.

[shane]

My nephew hasn't had them that long and was cleaning them out today.
He had a small surprise when he saw some eggs.

[Jenny]

He'll have a lot more yet They take several months to hatch, I just kept them in a seperate container in the kitchen. Now I have loads

[peanuts]

cool photo, so close and clear

[TenebrousNova]

The resemblance to a seed is uncanny. Some types of ants actually mistake them for seeds and bring the eggs into the nest, and the eggs even have a special scent to smell good to the ants. Some eggs are eaten of course, but most of the baby stick insects leave the ants nest unscathed later on.

[Wood~Ant]

Our bark stick insects have also mated and laid eggs, and some of the insects are still growing, so if we collected all the eggs we'd end up with thousands as each mated pair produce about 70 eggs per female; and we have a lot of new females from the last eggs we picked up from just 2 adult females and 1 male.

We now have 3 tanks full of stick insects of various sizes, and they eat a lot of oak and bramble every 3 days. My home is full of females, but only 1 is my wife as the rest are either ants or stick insects ;D

[shane]

My nephew has around 20 eggs now from one female
and other 3 are almost ready to shead there last skin
before there ready for laying.

ekk 70 eggs per female, thats a lot I wonder how hes goin to house them all.
Think he said hes goin to sell them to his friends at school next year so I do not think
hes goin to have a prob with them gettin new homes.

[Wood~Ant]

Having so many adults now in 3 seperate tanks, we have to clean them out twice a week and feed them every 2 days. The result this morning was yet more eggs found, which probably means we will have to cease egg collecting later or we will have thousands of them

[TenebrousNova]

I know what you mean about cleaning, I have three now and the amount of waste they produce is phenomenal.

[shane]

Jun 14, 2011 8:09:10 GMT Wood~Ant said:

Having so many adults now in 3 seperate tanks, we have to clean them out twice a week and feed them every 2 days. The result this morning was yet more eggs found, which probably means we will have to cease egg collecting later or we will have thousands of them

you could try feeding some to your ant colonies if you get too many.

I've collected around 70 eggs now with 2 laying. Just another 2 females yet to lay
which maybe soon, They seem to lay around 3 eggs a day each.

And yes they do seem to poop a lot

[Wood~Ant]

Imagine what it must be like having 70 of them, as about 50 are females and actually laying eggs or close to doing so, and you get the picture of how many eggs we get and how much stick insect dung ;D