The vet and I decided not to do the PM. She had been frozen for awhile which affects the organs/tissues and said it may not be worth it. We talked about it and I agreed. He is pretty sure she was not gravid.



As for Kaiya's foot she is on antibiotics and I will bring her back next week. He is afraid she will probably lose the foot I feel that for all my love and attention maybe I was a bad mommy after all. Very sad. The good news is that even if that does happen she may be fine. As it is she gets along quite well and is quite the hunter so I am hopeful.



When we got home I put her back in her home and she went right to sleep so I put out the lights a little early - she'd had a big day!



I read all the posts about the speculation on (female) pygmy mortality. Hard to say b/c of the different breeders and sources they came from, cb vs. wc, etc. It is interesting that they have all been females (I think). I just looked at AdCham's profile again on the brevi's and they say that fertilization from retained sperm does occur (did you know that some spiders, including black widow, can maintain sperm for years before they decide to fert and lay - just an interesting bit of mini-beasts trivia). That photo of the one that had 16 eggs is strange, huh?



The speculation re: food is interesting and probably possible but it would be so difficult to figure it out without controlled studies (not just us swapping stories! LOL!) and I sure don't know of anyone doing any but if this species becomes more common in the trade maybe there will be. Just a personal opinion here, this is why I condone captive breeding for the simple reason that variables can be better controlled, maintained and measured - it's the scientist in me



As for what I feed/dust the feeders: The chams get both size ff and crickets to choose from - lately their preference has been ff. They all get dusted with Montane FF =http://www.speakeasy.org/~dervish/herpnutrition/montanefruitfly.htm). I will say that initially I was dusting every meal as directed then I worried about over-supplementing and checked with Liddy (Kammer) and she said 2-3/week was fine b/c the calcium concern is less in the pygmy b/c of their size. The calcium seems to be more of an issue with the larger species b/c they grow so rapidly esp. as babies and juveniles. I don't know if this (over supp) had anything to do with Makeda's death.



The ff always have fruit to hangout on once they are in the enclosure and the crix are feed apples, strawberries, blueberries soon as they are ripening on the bush as I write this(!) mmmm, cucumber (hi-water), carrots, etc. They also get crix food from herpnutrition.com



It would be interesting to get Liddy's take on the most recent posts regarding all of our thoughts. I will suggest that IF she gets the time to look at some and give us an opinion or if we as a group could come up with a specific set of questions I could certainly email her. That might be a better way to go - for her.



One last thing...if anyone is interested there is an article on Brookesia spp , the other leaf species.



whew!

lele

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