Newbie Breeding Ox Beetles...

GelGelada

GelGelada

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Hello! I am attempting to breed a pair of rhino/ox beetles that I have obtained and wanted to know if there are any big things I should be avoiding?
I have had the pair together for one week to mate, where I have observed they have mated at least five times now to my knowledge. I had the female in a large paint bucket (over 6 inches deep) with lightly packed topsoil (with chicken dung and earthworm casings) mixed with rotten oak which I have hand-prepared and soaked over a few weeks. The oak pieces are a little large, but I wanted to emulate a fallen, rotten oak branch to encourage her to dig under it, like she did with the male's enclosure during the day. The oak is mixed throughout and the largest pieces are on the top layer with dead leaves. She burrowed down for a few days, but then came back up and repeatedly tried to fly out of the bucket, so I have her with the male again for tonight while I figure out why she came back up. I have not yet checked for eggs. Is it normal for them to dig down, lay and come back up? It had appeared that she was pulling down the apple/banana chunks I had left on the top of the soil prior to this. I have done a lot of reading, but most websites only talk about breeding other beetles and not what I have, so I am unsure if I am doing this correctly.

I have been told that they like sand in their substrate, but I don't know how much sand I should add to her bucket or if that is the right thing to do. Right now the bucket is aerating, as I was worried it might be too moist (I live in a very humid area and it has been very humid here because of hurricane Florence) as there is condensation building up on the sides of the container. The bucket is vented. No water can be squeezed out of the soil and oak, though.

Is there anything else I can add to the soil to make it more tempting, or should I just leave her in the container for as long as I can until she lays? I only check on her to feed her in the morning and replace her fruit. Is it possible she just won't lay at all, even after mating multiple times?

I feed both of them with banana with a few drops of raw honey, which they appear to eagerly eat but I am unsure if this is okay for long-term feeding or for producing eggs. I am going to buy jelly soon, but have not yet done so as I only have this one pair and the other grubs I am raising.

TLDR: Substrate is topsoil mixed with chicken+earthworm dung, dead leaves and boiled+soaked oak pieces & bark; female ox beetle appears to have rejected the soil and doesn't appear to want to lay. What do?

 
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Have you dug through the substrate to see if she is laying? The ultimate guide states that this species needs a sandy substrate, with rotten leaves and live grass planted in the top of the substrate

 
Live grass? Dang, I have only heard of grass clipping/dead grass mixed with it. I have checked for eggs this morning but my eyesight is poor so I am not sure what I am looking for. Anything I think she may have laid in is being kept so I can keep checking it. I will mix in sand today and more leaves and see if I can get some kind of grass seed. Issue is, all of the roads around my house right now are closed (bridges too) so I have been sort of penned in my neighborhood due to severe flooding drainoff this week. If she won't lay without grass, there's just nothing I can do.

Thank you!

 
I am currently adding sand to the topsoil, but I do not know how much sand she needs. Is their a particular ratio I should be aiming for, or is it just "some"? Should there be packed layers? Etc. I am also adding more leaves to my mixture, just in case. My leaves are a mix of dried/dead oak from my yard, which have been reduced to fine pieces in a blender. I will also add large leaves later. All of my sand is mixed with clay dust, so I hope that is okay. I cannot go out and buy bagged sand right now and since she has been mating for a week, I want to get her into something as soon as possible because I do not know how old she is. She is still very active and came right out of the soil when I opened the holding tub she is in right now, so she is still very lively. I do not think she had laid yet.

 
Ok, so I got out the old guide, and apparently here’s what you need for egg laying: at least 2.5 gallon container, 4+ inches deep of fine sand for them to lay in and a few handfuls of leaf litter on the surface (apparently the only components necessary in terms of actual sub), and live grass, which can be taken from a lawn or grown in the cage (apparently it’s a necessity). One female will lay about 20 eggs, and it is advised not to disturb them as they’re pretty fragile.

 
Bugboy3092 said:
Ok, so I got out the old guide, and apparently here’s what you need for egg laying: at least 2.5 gallon container, 4+ inches deep of fine sand for them to lay in and a few handfuls of leaf litter on the surface (apparently the only components necessary in terms of actual sub), and live grass, which can be taken from a lawn or grown in the cage (apparently it’s a necessity). One female will lay about 20 eggs, and it is advised not to disturb them as they’re pretty fragile.
Click to expand...
Alright, thank you! I mixed a lot of sand into what I was using before. I do not have pure, fine sand so I instead boiled and sifted a lot of sand from my yard yesterday and mixed that into my grub food (boiled because we have fire ants and I did not want to risk there being any ants or ant eggs in it). Then I dried it in the sun so it wasn't too wet. She seems to like this mix a lot more now and I have not seen her above and crawling around since I put her in it. However, I do not have access to grass right now so I instead put a large slab of long moss in the top of the bucket and covered it with the dead leaves and grass clippings.

This morning, I found her under the moss and digging DEEP under it (straight down in a hole about three inches deep), so fingers crossed she is going to lay now. I'm out of time by now, I think. Hard to see in photo two but that's her little face covered in sand. She's turned around in her tunnel since this morning and has not budged from it...

Thank you for all the help! If she doesn't lay, I will just try with different beetles next time where I know I will have everything available to me. These beetles were not planned.

Can you perhaps link the book to me later so I make sure I buy the right one later? Also, are there any photos of the eggs online so I can identify them later? Sand makes it even harder for me to see them.

newbucket.jpg

newbucket2.jpg

 
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ultimate_Guide_to_Breeding_Beetles.html?id=fptSLwEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description

I doubt that egg pics for Strategus exist online though. Here is an egg of Dynastes; Strategus eggs should look the same (the two are related after all).
DgrantiOva.jpg


Good luck

 
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Also, beetle jellies are not absolutely needed, the Guide says that 25% brown sugar or 50% real maple syrup solutions are fine. Supposedly it also says fruit solids can sometimes kill by getting lodged in the digestive system, but banana is semiliquid anyways.

 
Ah, okay. I was offering them pureed banana in a holder but that got difficult to do so I was using the last of my banana in chunks instead. I'll switch back to mostly liquid. The first week I had them, they were eating thinned banana with honey but I got tired of finding them submerged in the food in the morning... pffft. I'm going to order jelly or make my own later this week now that they finally opened the bridges. The male is a dainty eater but the female beetle is always dug as deep as she can into her food...

Do you know if there is any homemade beetle jelly that is bad to use? I see many tutorials to make it on Youtube and Twitter but I am unsure if all of them are suitable. The one I was going to try was from Spike the Beetle on Twitter, which is a brown sugar mix with fruit and agar-agar.

 
Beetle food can be made from many different sugary fluids, I don’t make jelly but rather mix a ton of brown sugar into some hot water, then let it sit for about a week. The mix ferments and seems to become alcoholic, much like what many large scarabs eat in the wild.

also, if you’re getting the ultimate guide you won’t need the eastern Hercules guide, as it’s a chapter in the book (the ultimate guide is a compilation of the entire beetle breeding series, so no other beetle breeding books are really necessary)

 
Found four eggs tonight! Her substrate is not what my book recommends, but I guess she doesn't care. I didn't plan to have these beetles, so she's in stuff built for hercules beetles with a lot of grass clippings and some sand. Beetle book says 90% but... she's laying anyway? I could not sprout grass in my sand mixture and also keep it wet, so I substituted a big slab of moss and it worked! She's laying... I'm so happy to get eggs on my first try! I will post updates as they grow, provided I don't have a massive egg loss and lose all that I have right now.

Edit: My male was on his back this morning and sluggish, I think he's dying... it's a shame, but that's the risk with wild-caught beetles I guess. I had him for about a month and I bred the two so... female is still really active after laying her few eggs though, so fingers crossed she lays more and I can have a colony.

 
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Right on! If she’s laying it’d be a good routine to check the sub once a week, as that provides her enough time to get over any stress caused by the last check to lay more eggs, and isn’t too long to let her lay too many (if they lay a lot of eggs in the substrate, they’ll start laying less or accidentally crush eggs while laying more).

 
That's my plan! I put what I found in separate deli cups and I'm going to check her again this weekend. I know the care book says not to disturb them, but I have four large eggs right now and I'm watching them develop on my desk. I can see the little grubs forming inside! When I first found them, I couldn't see that so I think they're doing well. I made sure to set up the cups like the care book called for with a rotten leaf layer I had prepared over the top of them, followed by a layer of food in case they hatch while I'm not home.

I have only been touching her when I absolutely have to, so I don't think she's really getting stressed out? I'm being extra cautious, because I'm already kind of skirting the rules with substrate for her, but she's laying so I don't want to change anything. All I did was provide her with new burrow material because she gathered up every piece of grass I had in there before and tore the moss up.

The eggs I did find were VERY spaced out in my bucket so I am not sure if she's at risk for crushing any? I didn't see anything that looked like a crushed egg when I checked her. Like, I found one egg at the top near a bundle of grass she wove together and the rest down deep in the two inches or so I had compacted down in the bucket when I first set it up for her. I'm just happy the slab of moss trick worked, because I couldn't get any grass to sprout in another bucket and my yard doesn't have grass this time of year.

Also, are pure white eggs infertile? There's one that is very white compared to the other three and I am not sure if I can see a grub inside that one. It might be a trick of my eyes.

Thanks for all the help!

 
Not too familiar w dynastine scarabs but it is possible your pale egg was simply fresher than the others

Many insect eggs darken when maturing

 
That makes sense. That one is beginning to darken and the rest are very yellow now. I can clearly see the grub inside the eggs by this point. I'm excited! I need to check my bucket again for more eggs tonight.

 
First egg hatched! The rest will probably pop tomorrow or the day after, given how yellow they are now. I'm so excited!

I'm aware the photo looks humid but it's unavoidable with such teeny jars in my house. The substrate itself is barely moist to the touch.

BABY.png

 
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