Posted by:
mikecoscia
at Thu Jun 26 07:51:37 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by mikecoscia ]
Bill,
Okay I think I know why you got the results you did. The two females you raised are very similar in size. The female that had fruit/meat and crix was only slightly bigger but she was 3 months older. Around 12 months their growth really starts to slow down which prob accounts for the all fruit female so close behind in weight and length of the other. You also did not start giving the all fruit female the fruit/meat mix until she was 6 weeks which also could play a role to their close size (you never mentioned if they where the same size when you started, an important thing in this experiment). In their first month they literally should double in size, so if one was larger in the beginning it would throw off your results. If not then it was prob the other case I mentioned.
Now I just measured the two females I mentioned yesterday. The 8 month old is 8.0” and the 7 month old is 7.25”, so both larger and significantly younger then yours. All my hatchlings eat anywhere from 5-10 crix every day until they hit one year, which upon I feed them every other day. That’s where I think you went wrong. You still where giving fruit/meat more then crix to the one female (fruit/meat 4 days, crix 3). She should have had just crix nothing else from the beginning. Every once in awhile I get stubborn crix feeders and they usually are on the same diet as your female. Just crix a few times a week and fruit/meat the rest. Their growth rates where similar to the ones you got in your experiment. Just a wee bit bigger then the all fruit/meat (no crix) raised hatchlings. Sill much smaller then the hatchlings on all crix though.
“I recall you saying that it took you almost 2 years to raise then to breeding size on a similar diet (closer to 1:1 you had said).” Okay that female was Muppet and Matisse is doing the same thing, she is over a year and still half the size of the others. Muppet is just ready to breed now (almost 3) and Matisse has a ways to go despite her age. However both where runts and received on that fact they always would be tiny animals because of poor starts. They pretty much only ate the fruit (no meat supplemented) and very few crix for the first year or so. After I came into the picture they started to get fruit/meat instead of just fruit with the crix, similar to your test female. Their growth rates where very poor, but it prob was do to genetics not the diet and are really not relevant in this experiment. However all fruit (no meat) and few crix would prob see similar results because of the small amount of protein. Might even be similar to the growth rates in the wild because conditions are not always in their favor.
Yes please let me know the stats on your leachies. Magoo as I mentioned is just 5 months and 32 grams, which is pretty good I believe. As I would imagine the all crix diet should see similar results regardless of species. I won’t draw any conclusions yet until you get back to me, but so far your results are on par with the growth rates of my all fruit/meat geckos and stubbourn feeders (fruit/meat 4 days, crix 3). Coupled with my two females on just crix and very small amounts of fruit (something you did not test) our data is again showing my original results that the all crix grow larger. I am really more intrested in what the CGD will show. Thanks for the info and quick reply.
-Mike
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RE: few q's =)..... - mikecoscia, Thu Jun 26 07:51:37 2003