My broody hen's reaction to strange chicks has been panic--as if they have suddenly been thrust into another hen's nest full of chicks, and any minute the REAL momma is going to return and give them a trouncing. I HAVE had luck with having a broody hen who hatched out three chicks accept 4 more chicks the next day that I hatched from the incubator. As each one hatched I placed it under her, while taking one of her dud eggs away. They are at this minute 1 week old and progressing normally, momma is great. :) Here's what might work: let her brood some eggs for a few days, then one NIGHT while she is asleep and groggy, without turning on any lights (or as few as possible), gently and quietly slip the eggs out and the chicks under her. When done make things dark and quiet again so she'll settle down and sleep (babies too). But stay close and keep an ear out for screaming chicks if she isn't fooled, and have a brooder box standing by that night and well into the next day or so just in case. That may fool her into thinking she's hatched them. Needless to say, the chicks need to be very young, freshly hatched or just a few days old--no older, feathered out chicks. Just today I had ANOTHER banty hen go broody--one of my little old lady cochin girls, who really is too old for that kind of nonsense. Now I have 8 broodies! *whimper* Velvet ~:>

Michael: I see Mantid egg cases nearly every fall when I clean out the pepper plants from the past season. The cases I find appear as rough, baglike structures, often more than an inch long, attached to a pepper branch at the end of the case. The material of a Mantid egg case is extremely tough, like styrofoam on steroids. It is so tough that it is difficult to cut even with a sharp knife. I have never seen a Mantid case laid flat against a tree branch or twig as yours is. The fact that I have never seen it does not mean, of course, that it never happens, but I have seen quite a few of them since Mantises are active in my peppers and tomatoes nearly every season in late summer. Your egg case also appears to have suffered some physical damage on the surface, though the photo may be misleading in this respect. The tough material of a Mantid case would normally not suffer any damage from environmental conditions. If the egg case was hit directly with dormant oil, the prognosis for any creatures inside would not be good, whatever they may be, since the purpose of oil spray is precisely to smother overwintering insects. When I find egg cases on the pepper plants, I cut off a small part of the branch to which it is attached, and place it in a glass fishbowl with screen wire on top, then bring it in to my attached greenhouse, where the winter temperature never falls below freezing. If the case is healthy, hundreds of little mantises, about the size of healthy mosquitoes, emerge with the warmth in late April or May. I don't know how the little rascals get through that tough styrofoam, but they do, and when I figure they have all hatched out I take the fishbowl outdoors, remove the screen wire, and set them free. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Ititon... you asked our opinions, we gave them to you...and now you are (kind of) refusing to accept ALL/ANY of them. Those potatoes DID NOT grow from pea size to that size after being detached from the vines! If that were the case, we should all just put our undersized spuds in a box with dirt in a warm storeroom and by mid winter we would have full sized potatoes. Here is a scenario...when you pulled the dead vines you loosened the dirt around the plant. You carefully moved the dirt so as not to disturb the other variety. Harvested all the visible ones and covered the spot back up with mulch. In the meantime it rained hard several times (or you watered) and the loose dirt shifted and exposed the one pictured. Let us be firm in our resolve...but not so unbending faced with the truth.

Tent caterpillars make egg cases that would be described just as you did. I've never seen one that wasn't built around a twig, unlike the mantids, which seem to be happy to leave their eggs any ol' place, lol! The TC egg mass, however, is probably smaller than the PM's. P.S. I escort praying mantids off my property; they take too many of the good guys! Here is a link that might be useful: