Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi;
Im the mom of 8 lizards two beardies an rankins, a few leopard geckos a gargoyle gecko and a crested gecko......

I have had Delilah (my female) for 6 years.

She and Dakota (my male) live seperately (she is upstairs from him in a beautiful enclosure my husband built for them)

She recently broke into his house and I found them with him on top of her, no injuries, they were actualy very calm, they see eachother alot but have not really had contact until that time.

Im guessing by logic that they mated.

She is looking alittle bigger in the tummy its been around 3 weeks (she is a big girl to begin with very spoiled) and lately been digging and digging and digging.......

On the advice of my bud's at the local reliable pet shop I got her some vermiculite in a deep tray and she is digging away, she emptys it out and we refill it and she happily digs it out again.

Im guessing also by logic that is normal behavior.

how moist should the vermiculite be?

My buds at the shop have a hoobervator for the eggs if i find some in the next few weeks i belive the gestation if like 6-8 weeks?

Would appreciate some conformation of what Im thinking and perhaps some advice as we have never done the egg thing with dragons.

Thanks in advance;

Sue

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Life is what happens when you are making other plans.......

I'd be real surprised if she laid eggs if she never has before in 6 years. Generally, she'll eat alot while the eggs are forming and then stop eating when she is ready to lay them.

The best help I can think of is to read and look ate the pictures on the web site below. They are a well known large breeder and have a very good description of their process.

http://www.dachiu.com/care/egglb.html

The bottom line is to lay eggs she's gonna want to dig a hole she can get into and then fill it in when she gets done. Only if she is desparate will she lay them on top on your vermiculite. In other words your box is too shallow.

Hope this helps. I think beautifuldragons.com has a description of a nest box too. You could check there and see if that will work better for you.

Sorry I can't help with your questions. But I love your tanks, did you make them. I would love to have the patterns, as I getting ready to build larger enclosures.

My husband built the enclosures, I got the idea of furniture quality enclosures so my house wouldnt feel like it looked like a "petshop".

my husband is a talented carpenter and can build just about anything........

there are no patterns, what I can tell you is that each "level" stacks on the previous one so the unit comes apart to move it to another room.

The top level box that Delilah suns in houses the light for the dragon below.

the bottom level is split in half there are 2 leopard geckos on one side and one on the other, they are divided by their sex.

I saw something like this on a website years ago and I asked him to design something for my 40th birthday.........and he did.

Thanks for the compliment, I will pass it on to the artist......

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Life is what happens when you are making other plans.......

well she just laid a bunch of eggs on the floor of the cage now what?
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Life is what happens when you are making other plans.......

What to do with the eggs depends on what you ultimately want to do with them. Do you want to hatch them out? or not take that route at all?

To Hatch the eggs you need to place them (in the same orientation they were in the cage - ie don't turn them) into a container with about 1-2 inches of vermiculite moistened in a 2:1 ratio by weight. That is, one part vermiculite to two parts water by weight ( ie 100gs vermiculite would mean putting in 200gs of water). Bury the eggs about half way in the vericulite (using your finger to press indentations in the vermiculite makes this easier) leaving about half an inch of space between each egg. A deli container that is about two inches deep or slightly less with a lid that is bubbles up so it gives more space above the eggs works well. Poke a few holes in the lid for air flow.

Incubate the eggs in an incubator at 82-85F. They will hatch between 55-75 days.

Reading back posts here in this forum will bring up plenty of threads going in more detail about incubating and rearing young.

As this wasn't a planned breeding and you really don't want to raise up baby bearded dragons you have two options. Give the eggs to somebody you know who will love to incubate and raise the babies. Or freeze the eggs in your freezer for about 12 hours then toss them out in the trash.
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PHLdyPayne

I contacted my buddy at the local pet shop and he is incubating them for me........

thanks

sue
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Life is what happens when you are making other plans.......

Congrats. Hope every thing goes well with them.