Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Back in early July one of our cats killed and partially ate a fence lizard. There were 9 eggs inside fairly close to full term, but not completely shelled. I removed the eggs and decided to incubate them.

They started hatching a couple days ago. So far 1 egg has yet to hatch, 1 died in egg (with a skull deformity), 4 appear fine albeit small, and 3 appear to have portions of their skull that didn't form. These 3 made it out fine. They have opennings in the back of their head and it looks like the sac surrounding the brain is protruding.

The worst one is missing over 1/3rd of his skull and I'm going to euthanize him tomorrow (I can't see how this would be survivable in the longterm). The other two have much smaller defects, about a millimeter in diameter. Has anyone else ever dealt with anything like this? Will this eventually scale over? Or is this something that is not going to heal? It kind of looks like a little bubble protruding from the side of the parietal scale.

Right now I'm planning on taking the wait and see approach with the two who have minor defects. If this is going to be invariably fatal, however, euthanasia might be best.

I feel really bad for the three of them (
Alice

How are the kids today Alice, I was sad to read this
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PHEve / Eve

The remaining egg hatched another baby with a severe skull deformity. That guy and the sibling with the severe deformity were both euthanized.

The remaining 6 including the 2 with minor skull defects seem to be doing fine. The tissue over the area with the defects seems to be getting thicker and darker and is no longer translucent like it was when they initially hatched. I'm hoping those areas will callous or scale over. They're all smaller than they should be and seem to tire quickly, but they are all eating and drinking.

My plan right now is to release the four healthy guys in my backyard if I can get them to a size where they won't be food for everyone. If the two guys with minor defects continue to do well, I'll keep them as pets(we have a pair of sagebrush lizards and their three progeny who hatched out this year in our office that they could join). In captivity they won't have to deal with any real physical assults so these deformities may not be as detrimental as they would be in the wild.

I think that it's a real miracle that any of them made it and if I can release a few of them, their mom will have still been able to make her contribution to fence lizarddom.

Congrats on your granites!
Alice