Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm so excited... From Sunday on, my female veiled was wandering the bottom of her cage, looking for a place to lay her eggs... I had a round container with 8" of peat, a round container with 1" peat for the crickets to lay eggs in (with a small lid holding food for those feeders), and she chose the 1" container...

THEN I replaced the 1" with a large square 5" deep one that she prefered... But because of the present cage limitations (opening for stuff to go in) I wasn't able to find anything deeper than the one with the 8" of peat.

After 4 days, she decided to start digging in the 8" deep one, and 6pm on Wednesday there were still no eggs. I got home around 9:30, and she had most laid! She didn't stop pressing the peat down until well after 1AM when I decided it was time to let her know she was done (she'd just been pressing dirt for 1.5 hours...). She drank for almost 2 minutes straight from her bowl (yes, she drinks from a bowl - I mist, too, but she goes to her bowl for a drink at least once a day no matter how much I mist), and stayed at the bottom of the cage for almost the next 24 hours. I started to worry, and tried to get her near the top where the heat lamp was, but she just wanted to rest at the bottow - didn't eat, either, I think. But she's back to normal today (from Wed. night to Fri night), and it even looks like I did after I had my baby - a little bit of a saggy belly! But she's happy, eating, basking, drinking - all normal for her, as far as I can tell.

So I now have 29 (yes, 29!!!) eggs resting on some eco earth (damp, not wet nor dry) in a large plastic deli cup (10" across) with holes around the sides for some air flow. Container is in a drawer that my 2-year-old has no idea how to get into, nor does she know there's anything of interest in it...

The eggs I got from the pet store were MUCH smaller than these, so I don't think that they were fertile (half the size, I think). She hadn't been caged with a male for about 2.5-3 months (quite possibly more), so... I still have five that havn't had any mould that couldn't be wiped away easily, so we'll see what happens with them.

Anyways, I just wanted to talk about what I got to go through. I'm really happy about all this - now I just have to think about how I want to feed them, newborn pinhead crickets, or ff cultures. I think I'm leaning towards crickets just because I have SO MANY critters eating crickets, and I don't want to have to chase the loose feeders all over the house - I do enough of that with crickets... lol! Cheers all!

ps - for some reason, my male also likes his water bowl. He drinks from it whether there's drops falling in it or not. It's right on the bottom, and he's misted 2-3 times a day for 3-5 minutes... They just both seem to like their water bowls. THey also like to find crickets drowning in them...

hey,thats awesome..that must be soo cool to watch your cham. digging and doing all that stuff..i can remember before i got my cham over a year ago i couldn't even imagine the crazy things they acually do and had no idea what to expect..he still keeps doing new,different things that are always fun to watch..to see a female doing all that though would be something completely different..thats definitely a experience to remember..someone needs to somehow video tape them in the act of doing all this..well i hope you have fun with all the eggs and good luck..also,i'd suggest the fruit flies as first feeders..when my guy was a tiny baby he definitely preferred ffs over crickets..actually he didn't eat too many crickets when he was younger..small phoenix worms might be something good to try too..let us know how things go...CONGRATZ!!
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Jonny Blaze
1.0 Nosy Be Panther
1 Bearded Dragon--sex not determined yet
0.1 Yorkshire terrier Brandy,10 years old
1.0 Golden lab-Dusty R.I.P May 16,2007,14.5 years old
1.0 Black lab "wiggler",2 years old
s136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/jonnyblaze_04/?sc=3

Thanks! She's looking like she may have another few in her again, but it's absolutely many less than before. And it WAS awesome watching it. I hope next breeding season for her I'll get the photos, and maybe a night-vision vid of it... We'll see. And it's now almost a full month since she laid, and they are all still really plump and juicy looking. I can hardley wait!

On the other hand, the eggs from the pet store are still all dark, and one has partly-deflated, but there's been no mold on any egg for 3.5 weeks. I have much hope! It may be baseless, but I'll still be hoping! I'll give them until the middle of July next year before I really throw in the towel on those, or on any of them, really! We're still at 75-80 at all times, fluctuating during the day, and no light outside of the 30 seconds once or twice a week to peek at them... YAY EGGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can hardley wait until I really get into the other species we have... (5 different species of snakes we'll be breeding, 4 sp of lizards... - if we stick just with they ones we got and don't add more! - maybe even some tarantulas later....)

Cheers all!