>>Dusty, thanks for helping me solve this mystery. I've got my hands full with eggs now!

That's awesome. I just figured that if all of my females this year would have averaged the number of eggs laid by your two, I would have had about 120 eggs. Instead, I had about 85, about 65 of which were good. That was out of 11 females who laid. I lost about 4 good eggs from females laying them in aspen (which led to dessication of the eggs).

I can't take all of the credit for helping your "golden boy" (or should I say goose? ) in the fertility department. Adam Sweetman was a mentor of mine when I first started breeding/keeping subocs, and he was a firm believer in keeping males cool (room temp) and away from external heat. When he told me that, I thought that bit of wisdom was especially applicable for desert (and somewhat fossorial) species such as TPRSs. I was like, "Aha! It's substantially cooler in the shade in the desert...it has to be even cooler underground where subocs sleep during the daytime -- they never see sunlight, etc etc. so suboc males are probably more susceptible to spermatocidal heat than, say, Corn Snakes or Yellow Rats (in whose habitat, by the way, it's even hot in the shade!)." Anyway, that was my thought process, and I'm glad I could apply that and pass it on to other keepers (and actually hear that it helped!).

Well done, Mike. You've obvioulsy got some healthy critters.

Dusty



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