Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know in the wild the female lays 1 clutch of eggs in a chamber in her burrow. Well when they hatch do they eat the adults poo and go away, or do they eat the adults poo and hang around there for a little while and find out how to do things from adults? If they hang around the burrow for a period of time shouldn't we house our hatchlings with our adults. This is a complete question i am not doing this at the momment but i do have a clutch of eggs due any day now and want to know if i should put them in the little tank setup i have for them or with the adults. Also, do you feed them wet poo or dry poo? Some people tell me wet others tell me dry. Last but not least, one of my eggs has a black line on the top of th shell, and when i candled it the line was glowing. Is is starting to cut the egg shell or is it nothing.
Mike

I'm certainly no expert at this as I've only hatched my first clutch of uro babies, but I've hatched other lizards and I read a lot about lizards etc. Since nobody else has answered this I'll make an effort. The only lizards I've read about that actually take care of their babies are the Solomon Island Prehensile Tail Skinks. There may be others, but those are the only ones that have been kept much in captivity. I've not heard about breeders keeping adult and hatchling uros together. Doug Dix instructed me to feed the adult poop to the babies and didn't say anything about keeping the babies with the adults. I consider him to be an expert. In the wild, I would guess that the female lizard guards the nest for a while but them leaves after the eggs start to hatch or even long before that. I know that the females do guard the eggs somewhat, but I don't know how much. So there would be adult poop around the nest area, that doesn't mean that the adults would still be around once the babies hatched. In captivity we are keeping them in unusually close quarters. So even if the adults did live near the babies in the wild, to keep them with the babies in captivity would be to keep them under more stressful and close/confined conditions than they would be in the wild, so it would worry me that there would be more risk of injury. I know that people have been raising other types of uros like ornates just fine in captivity without the adults in with the babies so I'm assuming my geyri and your maliensis (did I spell it right?) will do fine, too. My babies seem to have a natural instinct to eat. Doug said the instinct to eat the poop lessens after the first few days, so that is evidently something that would just last while they are around the nest area and then they would presumably wander off and not be around that poop in the wild. -Lucy
Small Dragons