Years ago, one was Andrew Owens, and a few others that had her siblings, most I venture to guess never lived very long, and or were sold when owners lost interest in one species, then sold them for others.

She became eggbound during a time when I was tranferring her between cages, I had her in one too small, I was building another when she was in one in between sizes, during this time she became somewhat dehydrated internally.

I tranferred her to the new cage with deep dirt (the wrong stuff), she swelled, and swelled, did not eat much at all, basked alot, and lost a bit of reserve fat.

I consulted a few more experienced keepers at this time, as well the experience of one who bred BTs and had an eggbound female (but his was bound with fertile eggs). I used their experiences to estimate when action was needed and verified what I expected through an xray at the vets, she was full of eggs. At that time I discussed with this vet what I wanted done, that was as soon as possible to remove the eggs, I also asked if he could prevent this from ever possibly happening by removing her ovaries, he agreed and we set a week out as the time, also to give her a total of about 4 weeks time to lay on her own in the new dirt that was put in as fast as possible when problems started occuring.

With a female approaching breeding age you must have the correct conditions to allow egg laying, proper hydration, etc, they need this for a period of time before the cycle, not interuptions and stress.

Its was bad luck, bad timing, and my bad choices, regardless, as far as reptiles go she is the best reptile pet I have ever seen or met period, therefore I felt an urgency in her safety and recovery, which occured, she healed shut from surgery in 1-2 weeks with an expected time of stitch removal of 1 month, she shed almost all the stitches out beforehand and never slowed down growing.

I wish there were others I knew of with her siblings now.

Rob Faust did a beautiful job producing this girl.

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