Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello. I don't post too often on this forum, but I thought you all might be interested in my recent clutch. From 7/3-7/7 my clutch of 14 black tailed cribo eggs hatched, with most of them either pipping or exiting the egg on 7/4. There is still one straggler hanging out in the egg, but I'm sure he'll make it out okay.

Here's a little bit of information about the clutch. The father was LTC and the mother was CB from Chris Raden. Originally, 20 eggs were laid, two of which were obviously infertile. Four eggs went bad during the course of incubation. The cribos started breeding on 12/25/07 and the eggs were laid the morning of 3/29. The eggs were incubated in an incubator I made out of a retired refrigerator at 77 /- 1 degree on Hatchrite substrate, which is pretty much hydrated Perlite as far as I can tell. At about 80 days of incubation the eggs felt like they were losing a bit of water, so a little bit of moistened Perlite was added to the egg containers.

The coolest part of it all was that one egg contained a set of twins.

So now the trick is going to be to get them all eating. One of the babies already took a live pinky mouse. Any other cribo breeders out there have any suggestions for good things to scent with if they refuse mice?

Thanks to all the folks out there that gave me advice about breeding and incubating the eggs, especially Steve Fuller and Jeff Jones.

Robert Harper

AWESOME! Congrats!

Robert,

Nice going on the BT clutch!

In terms of scenting rodents, I've had very good, very consistent success using fish scent for some of my hatchling Yellow Tails. I use large fresh water minnows (3 to 4 inches in length) from a lake in Virginia where I often fish. I freeze the minnows, thaw one and slice open the belly and rub the live mouse fuzzy or hopper against the fish entrails. The live fish-scented mouse is then offered to the hatchling YT. Sometimes they will take them almost immediately, while others were eaten overnight or the second day. The combination of the movement of the live mouse coupled with the fish scent seems to do the trick. Hoppers and large fuzzies seemt to work better than pinkies as they move around more. In a few cases the scented rodents weren't eaten during the first offering, but were accepted on the second or third trys. All the scented rodent feeders converted to unscented rodents within a few meals after they began feeding regularly.

I've found this approach to be both effective and convenient, rather than trying to feed live fish etc, which is a very messy proposition. Using frozen minnows, you always have scenting material readily available and they will keep indefinitely.

Hope this helps.

Brian

Thanks, I'll give that a shot if I have some reluctant feeders. So far I've gotten two to eat live unscented pinks...I'm not sure if they usually eat prior to their first shed or not, but two have already. I'm going to try them again in another couple of days, but if they don't eat, I'll give the fish scent a try.
Robert

I've successfully used the same method as Mr Sharp and have also scented with chicken.
Good luck

Hey, knock off that Mr Sharp stuff. I'm old enough as it is, without references that just make me feel older! LOL

Sorry bout that............sir!!!!!!!!!!! LOL

Ouch!!!

LOL! I was being respectful!!!!!

Hi Robert, Well done! I'd always assumed hatchlings had a nice meal in them upon emerging and wouldn't feed until after first shed. Who'd a thunk it?