Fat chaco

I have recently bought a 2.5 inch chaco golden knee female, her name is robin




She's a wee bit of a chubalub, her abdomen is pretty big but her appetite is nothing short of greedy. How much food a week should I give her? Also she keeps burrying herself in her hide, why is that

I'd say one cricket a week, thats what my B.vagans gets except after a molt, then he gets a super worm to put some junk in his trunk in short amount of time. When she buries herself does she clog the entrance to the borrow? that in combination with a fat abdomen thats is black and shiny with a usual loss of appetite in most cases could mean premolt. A clearer picture of the abdomen would help a lot in confirming this.

Don't hold your breath though Grammastola is famous for showing Premolt behaviour for a LONG time before they molt but theres always exceptions.

When she burrows do you dig here up? If so immediately stop this as it will only stress the spider out. They no what there doing (thousands of years of evolution) and aren't going to trap themselves. believe it or not they can always get out of there hole as almost all terrestrial T's like to play bulldozer sonner or later

Enjoy you chaco!!!!

I say feed her until she's no longer hungry so that might be about 2-3 crickets for her body size which are small ones.

make sure there's not a lot of room between the top of the enclosure and the substrate to prevent injury/death if the T happens to climb and fall down.

can I see a picture of your whole enclosure?

One medium to large cricket per week is adequate for most terrestrials that size.
Some tarantulas burrow. It's what they do. Don't dig it up.

She devours adult crickets with no trouble

scorpionchaos said:

Don't hold your breath though Grammastola is famous for showing Premolt behaviour for a LONG time before they molt but theres always exceptions.

Click to expand...

It's true for Grammostolas like rosea, porteri, pulchra, but pulchripes is a bit of an oddball, concerning the 'common' Grammostola species, it's a medium speed grower rather than very slow one, and they don't tend to go fasting for months.

I'd move the water bowl away from the sides. if the spider slips when climbing on the cage side, it's abdomen can rupture if it lands on something hard.

From the pic of her it looks like she could be darkening up to molt. If she buries herself, let her, and wait for her to re-emerge. Might have a bigger spider when you do. Barricading the burrow is a means to stay safe during the molt process, during which they are helpless and incapable of defending themselves.

You should read up more about the species you own re:burrowing. Also that humidity gauge in there is useless, they are notoriously inaccurate. However the good news you don't have to worry about humidity with this species.

I'd add in some cork bark for your T to walk on and observe its behavior. They tend to like firm substrate. When I dropped in cork slabs, mine took to the slab instantly, same for another species I have. Even though I had packed my sub down. It's not a requirement just a suggestion

Speaking of such acts, I went to check on my Ts and my golden knee flipped over from a molt.

Now you can really see the golden knees, from this point on he/she will get regular sized crickets: