"We don’t recognise it, but young inexperienced males are bullied by gravid females, its not necessarily physical, my females stress out males simply with body language, this causes the males to feed less and soon perish in the high energy cages we use, this is why I separate and place males in cages NTL 72-75f DTH 78-80f with basking."

This would be a good explanation of what caused the crash of my young male except for the fact that I removed the gravid female as soon as I realized that she was gravid. He was still eating and shedding after that time. It must have been a full month after I removed her that he crashed. Of course I do realize that these guys don't show problems until it is too late, so this really is pretty much a moot point! I would say that my temps in this cage do fall into this range.

"Also I now believe that males can be introduced to females once every spring, and females will multiclutch fertile eggs throughout the year, if properly supported. The advantage of this equals in less stress on females and faster cycling.

This blue female laying her 3rd clutch has been mated once only, lets see how these eggs are?, I bet they will be fertile and so will her next clutch."

I'm betting on it too. I have said this for 8 years now. I have tested this and found it to be true. My coronata variants have not laid multiple clutches but my capra-like and armata have. I don't believe they need to copulate to produce fertile eggs either. I felt that my females were being over-worked with so many eggs so after my first year of breeding these animals I decided to separate the males from the females after mating. What I found was that they still laid up to 4 clutches and that they were all still fertile. In fact, I had one female that laid a clutch a full 9 months after being removed from the male and those were also fertile! So, mating one time a year is sufficient to get all of the eggs needed for a season with most of these animals.

I keep my coronata male and female together all year round and yet I only get one clutch and last year the eggs were laid around Christmas and this year it looks like it will be about the same time again.

I am sure I could manipulate the mating season by keeping the sexes separated because I did have a male that I kept alone. When I introduced a female he was on her like flies on, well you know the saying! As it is I keep them together and it seems that they mate in June through September with eggs laid October - February. As I stated, I always separate the sexes after breeding has occurred.

I agree with you on the price/value thing. It’s the same with dogs and cats. If you have plain old housecats or mutt dogs and give them away for free people tend to neglect them because they are trash/disposable animals. However if you charge $25-50 each for the same animals their new owners will take them in for shots, give them nice names, pretty collars and beds, and make them a member of the family! Really sad but it seems to be psychological. Free or cheap = little worth. High priced deserves good care.

Anyway, I appreciate you sharing your insight on the armata. I sure seem to be struggling with them yet. If you are not then anything you can share will be taken as valuable resource and has been to date! You were just absent when I lost my two females!




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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

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