In my experience there are slugs and there is unfertilized eggs. An unfertilized egg will look like a normal good egg but have no veins in it when candled. This is caused from the male.

I rarely get unfertilized eggs.



A slug is a immature ovum. They are small and yellowish looking. There is a number of causes for slugs. One is your female is over weight. Follicles don't all mature at the same rate. When one reaches maturity it then waits for the others. If your female is to fat her body will tell her to ovulate because there is no room for all her follicles to mature.



I got a female in 04 that was way over fed. In 05 she was over 4000 grams. She produced 9 slugs and 2 eggs that year. I fed her only 1 large rat that following year. In 06 she produced 6 eggs and 5 slugs. I again only fed her 1 large rat that following year. In 07 she produced 12 good eggs. She was 3200 grams that year. The following year I fed her until she was 3200 grams and then just maintenance fed her. I now know her optimum weight and she gives me good clutches every year.



A female that is under weight will ovulate to early because she does not have enough fat storage to grow all her follicles and care for the eggs.



Also stress can cause your female to ovulate early. Its not a good idea to check your female 10 times a day to see if she is ovulating yet.



What works best for me is to keep good records. This way I know what the optimum weight for all my females is. If I have a young female I don't breed her until she is over the weight she was the year before. If I have an Adult female I don't breed her until she is at her optimum weight. If she skips a year I just maintenace feed her to keep her weight up. Since doing this I rarely get slugs.



I keep my heat tape the same all year around 88-90 degrees. I drop the temp in my room to 75 degrees in Oct - Dec, 70 degrees from Jan - March. The rest of the year I keep the low at 80 degrees.



Doug Day

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