It's finally happened...roach moults!

You may remember my previous post in June about Norman the cockroach and his possible moulting. I originally thought he was about to moult but with hindsight, I think he was hardening back up from already moulting.

Why do I think this? Because Betty and Barney both moulted early this morning! YAY! I've been anticipating this as it's my first time keeping cockroaches and I've been eager to see the moulting process.

At around 4.45am today I woke up (from the heat) and went to check on the roaches. I did this instinctively as I had a feeling there would be some moulting happening soon and I was right! I removed the coconut hide and was greeted by this;

This is Betty; fresh out of her moult. The thing that looks like a dead roach is the old exoskeleton that she'd shedded. For reference, this is what she looked like before moulting;

Luckily I caught the moult in it's early stages - as you can see she's still pretty light in colour here, meaning it had probably been an hour or so since she popped out of the old skin. Even better, the old skin was completely intact and the only damage to it was a slit on the outer from which she'd emerged. Here are some more pictures of Betty post-moult:

So I thought that was it for the day. However, when I woke up after going back to sleep at around midday I was happy to find that Barney had also moulted! Here is what he looked like;

I think he had moulted a good few hours before I took this picture, as he's already turned a coffee sort of colour rather than the milky colour that Betty was.

This is what Barney look like pre-moult:

Unfortunately, his moult had been partially eaten (cockroaches recycle their moults by consuming them) and so looked like this;

The head and most of the legs are missing but still a cool souvenir! I think it's interesting that they moulted within a few hours of each other - I can only assume that they came from the same clutch. Here's Betty (all hardened up) and Barney together;

I love to keep mementos and so I laminated the moults;

Having seen the process first hand I think Norman has already moulted and was returning to his original black-brown colour, as he was slightly darker in colour when I found him than Barney.