Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all,

I have some similar questions as the post about ackie eggs a few posts back.

One of my females laid yesterday as well I got 11 out of her and only 4 look good. I am incubating all of then until they stink or are covered in mold though. There really is a drastic difference between the obvious good eggs and the bad ones. The good ones seem to be very white and not pick up the dirt they were laid in. Is this level of infertility normal? The female in question is 2 1/2 years and this is her 3rd and largest clutch.

I have 3 breeding females and in the past 2 weeks I have got 24 eggs from 2 of them and the last should lay in the next week or so. This is great except that only 6 appear to be good. This confuses me because I feel that I give plenty of calcium (but
I am going to increase it,) and both females have had about 4 months in between clutches. I feed gut-loaded crickets, ground turkey and pinkies as well as phoenix worms and meal and wax worms, although they don't seem to like the worms as much. Both females are young about 2- 2 1/2 years and one is on clutch # 3 and the other on clutch # 2.

I screwed up 2 clutches and hatched the only good egg from another. My technique is to incubate at about 86 degrees with some flucuation in perlite medium. The clutches I killed both dimpled within 24 hours of adding water to the medium and then were moldy and smelled within a week. One I added water at day 30 and the other at day 60. Now I NEVER add water and I only have one success but it is a great hatchling I will stand by this method if the 6 good eggs I have hatch in July. I do keep 2 small cups of water in the incubater and keep them full but I never add water to the perlite after the initial water at the beginning.

Does anyone out there have a different method of incubating ackies?

Is it normal to have such a high infertility rate? I try and give my females about 3-4 months in between clutches.

As they get older will the infertility rate go down?

I appreciate any help that people can give. I will post some pics when I get home from work.

Regards,

Eric

2.3.2 ackies

1.1 B&W Tegus

1.1 Irian Jaya Carpet Pythons

1.0 GTP

My first concern would be the statement, " i try to give 3 to 4 months between clutches" as if you deny them something to slow them down. If you just feed them and give them proper room to live and conditions/temps/etc are correct, it should just happen for you. As far as incubation, you said "fluctuation". What does that mean? Are you cooling or heating away from 86*F? - that is a no,no. Unless temp changes happen very slowly (by accident?), the eggs die (if they were fertile to begin with).

Thanks for the reply. What I meant by the 3-4 months between clutches is that I seperate the male from the females and besides that I don't change anything. They are fed everyday and have all the proper heating and temperatures.

By flucuation I meant changes in my room temperature that leads to slow drops such as during the night. I never change my incubator settings which is a Hovabator without the fan.

My main question is the infertile rate at laying right now only about 25% of the eggs are fertile the others are smaller very soft and they do not firm up and they do not have the bright white color of the healthy eggs. Is this normal? If not what can I do to improve the fertility rate? I will take some pics of the eggs and post them.

Thanks,

Eric

Don't let the male wear "tighty-whities" in that heat!

(sorry, too easy of a joke)

Seriously, i don't know if your eggs are infertiles, malnourished or are poorly incubated. Pictures of eggs help more than verbal descriptions.

I think and boy is it only thinking, your not really looking for help but for someone to tell you monitors are suppose to have infertiles. I am afraid I cannot do that, as these animals are designed to successfully reproduce. Anything that hinders that is not normal or right, if you will.

You say you have the right temps, the right everything, but your results suck. Please understand, poor results mean poor conditions. Yes, you are doing something wrong.

I have been breeding ackies since 91 and have produce thousands. At this time I am not producing large numbers, but I am successfully producing four different types. And guess what, I do not do it right at all, I always struggle to keep it going. But I do get mostly fertile eggs that hatch without incident. In fact, some are hatching now.

I do not feed a varied diet, I only feed crickets and pinky/fuzzies. My ackies normally produce at about six to seven months of age(unless I forget they are in a cage and do not feed them) They often produce month after month, in fact, sometimes every two weeks, and they have fertile eggs that hatch. I do dust the crickets with calicum and vitamins, but mainly for the raiseups. Not the adults. I do not dust the crickets with every meal either. Just every now and then. My temps often suck and I have to fix things and rearrange things. My humidity often sucks, as I am always fixing it.

So it appears I am doing it poorly, only I have better results, how odd.

Please take some humor with this, but doesn't the results define the quality of your husbandry.

May I repeat, I find it odd that keepers state how right they are doing, yet want some explaination for the failures. This is hard for to understand. I am not that quick between the ears it seems.

I think in you case, the tighty whities, is pretty close to right, Your males appear to be shooting blanks, why, got me, you say your doing everything right.

Again, consider humor, its kinda funny that you have the right temps and stuff, and are getting infertiles. Cheers

Frank
I am going to expose my self by asking probably dumb questions but your passion and results speak for for itself.

I have one pair and they were bought separately. They took three years to get right meaning I hatched out 5 of 7 last spring and this march I have 7 eggs again. Due to my climate it is difficult to simulate the seasons, NC has 85 one day and 30 the next!

I saw where the person you replied to separates the males? DO you recommend that? I am not looking to drive the market with babies but I get so much out of seeing them hatch out and raising them. My last years clutch are now copulating at about 10-11 months of age. I have 5 and it looks like three may be males only by the size. Would you keep all 5 together?

I worry about males fighting.

Thanks for all of your valuable insight!
Tony

Please, you need no explination as to why you want to see results. I allow them to breed for purely selfish reasons. I enjoy seeing them hatch(christmas) and I love raising babies(all kinds)

Also, what goes on outdoors has nothing to do with your cages. I do not season monitors in any way, I have the choices of temps year a round. They can get cool anytime they like and hot anytime they like. They then reproduce any time they want. And they do.

I do not remove males or do any dang thing unless there is reason to. If there are no problems, why do you want to make problems. The monitors are very very good at working it out. Of course, if something appears very wrong, then you may consider interfering. But please remember, anything you do is interfering.

I have found the monitors know much more then I, So I leave it up to them. This is where most people fail, they utterly believe in the written word and have no faith in the actual animal, the subject. I am the opposite. I have very little faith in the whats written about monitors and find monitors to be EXPERT at what they are and how they work.

I took this pic yesterday, its a pair of mountain horned lizards. The male is attending the female. He will follow her gently everywhere she goes. These lizards do this, as do the monitors, has do many many reptiles. They attend the females for a long period of time. Do I know why? I have theories, but no, I do not know nor do I have to know. What I do know is, there must be very good reason for this or they would not do it. So this mourning I go out and see two pairs of my larger monitors DOING, this exact same thing. Of course science says they don't do this, but then, what does science know? Not much about this, is the answer.

Anyway, the reason we leave them together is this, they do lots of things we do not know about. I even have pics of males helping the females dig their nesting burrows. Another thing we did not know.

Enjoy the pic and enjoy your monitors doing this. Cheers

FR,
Interesting post. I would love to see photos of a male helping to dig a nest if you can access them easily. What species? Happen more than once? This is cool stuff!!
Have you been keeping a list of "unusual" (note the quotation marks; not unusual for the monitors) behaviors? It would be cool to make a little pamphlet, especially with pictures.
This is the kind of stuff that keeps me interested in herps.

Thanks,
AH

Finally we are on common ground, I love these behaviors, my goal is to allow them to do what they already know how to do.

I do lots of field work with reptiles of several types, on varanus.net I post some pics of this stuff, recently I posted a series(condensed for the web) of a pair of rattlesnakes courting and copulating.

I the past I posted gilas cycling in nature, breeding in nature and attending in nature. Of torts doing the same.

Also of group nesting, and once a series of a female lacie carrying an egg into her nest. I had seen that many times with ackies, but were not in position to photograph it. That is, lay an egg or eggs one place and carry them to another.

All this and more has been posted on our site.

The truth is, I share very little in the way of pics here. There are two reasons for that. One is people here tend to gripe, whine, disparage everything said and posted. For instance, if you post pics of eggs hatching, which I do all the time on our site, here your bragging and showing off.

Because you were so nice in asking, I will be glad to find the series and post it. I will post in tonight or tomorrow and I will address it to you. Cheers

Thanks Frank. I have noticed similar behaviors with many of the herps I have kept over the years. I like to keep my eye open for what most people believe to be different. I have pictures from 20 years ago of Dumeril's boas caudal luring for prey. Also observed green mambas that would always assume a certain posture in the cage when they were hungry. I am still not sure if I trained them or they trained me! ( Actually, I think I know the answer. They always got what they wanted, right?) The Komodo that I took care of from the time it was a baby DEFINITELY behaved differently around me compared to other keepers. She frequently tried to climb my leg, which wasn't so cool when she reached about 7 feet and 100 pounds. I even had Uromastyx that tried to bite one particular keeper, but nobody else. These little things that most people miss are what I like. The things that make you go HMMMMMMMM.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing/hearing more.

AH

I use a Hovobator and keep it filled with H20 in the channels. I use perlite and squeeze it untill no drops appear. I do open the tupperware lid once a week to ciculate air That seems to work for me. I only keep the lid off long enought to inspect the eggs visually.
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