This female scaly, I hand fed since she was a baby.
At the time of the above picture, she is five years old. She is free ranging and wild. I have watched her pair up, breed, multiclutch. She starting laying the year after she hatched and produced 3 clutches that year. She normally has four to five clutches a year. She has endured hardship, she was nearly killed by something a month before the above pic. If you look close, you can see scars around her eye, and her tail is missing.
If you notice, her head is orange, this is a product of being gravid, as soon as she lays, that color fades away, and comes back as soon as she becomes gravid again.
She breeds the same make time after time. Even thought there are several males around.
She allows her offspring to use her areas for a time, but if they try to take food from my hands, she bumps them, as in rams. She takes a full on run and bonks them out of the way.
here she in in normal non gravid coloration.
As you can see, she will climb on me and feed. She also just follows me around out of curiousity. If I am working on a car, she will crawl up next to me and just sit. At times, its hard for me to work as she gets under foot. I nearly stepped on her many times. I have found her nests and photoed her babies.
I have posted her history as it happened on our site.
I also have a free ranging roadrunner, that does very much the same things, including allowing me to feed her babies. She also has been around for five years. She also met with near death last year. She also survived that. So yes, I have pet animals, that have big cages. Cheers
