or rather, up from the ground : )



after an apparently LOOOOOOONG incubation, we had a plethora of Ornate babies come out today : )



we haven't gotten a baby count yet, we still need to catch most of them...



these are from our 10 ft circular tanks, with 2 ft of soil, the eggs were laid somewhere underground, and must have hatched recently.



judging from the time the gravid female went down and came back up "empty", i was getting worried that we had bad eggs, no eggs, dead eggs, something other than success.



hold on to your shorts now, the female laid sometime in late March. March 26th was the day we marked as having her go down to lay. that is about 200 days until we saw babies today. holy smoky cows.



we have a temperature gradient in our soil, the female can burrow anywhere from the high 90's to the high 70's, with a moisture gradient as well. i have no idea where the eggs hatched at, nor do i have plans to dig up the tank to look for them.



but we are very happy with our first Ornate hatchlings, and according to our records, we have another female that went down a few weeks after this first female, so i will continue to watch for babies.



hatching babies "in-situ" is extremely exciting, now we have to work on making it a regular occurence : )
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robyn@proexotics.com



Pro Exotics Reptiles

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