Woke up to find this big female (normal, het for blonde) in the process of laying. She had laid about 6 or 7 but still had a ways to go so I just pushed her nest box back into the cage and left for work. Came home to find a total of 12 good eggs plus one slug. She had also laid one egg outside the nest box last Sunday (9/14). She shedded on 9/5. The egg she laid outside the box is in the incubator. It looks good but seemed a bit misshapen. Every day I look at it and it seems fine. But it was laid several days before the entire clutch. I just assumed it would be infertile. Who knows? Maybe it will hatch. BTW, this is the female in Dusty's book that laid 16 eggs in '06. She was bred with a really nice orange blonde male.
Dusty, thanks for helping me solve this mystery. I've got my hands full with eggs now!
) in the fertility department. Adam Sweetman was a mentor of mine when I first started breeding/keeping subocs, and he was a firm believer in keeping males cool (room temp) and away from external heat. When he told me that, I thought that bit of wisdom was especially applicable for desert (and somewhat fossorial) species such as TPRSs. I was like, "Aha! It's substantially cooler in the shade in the desert...it has to be even cooler underground where subocs sleep during the daytime -- they never see sunlight, etc etc. so suboc males are probably more susceptible to spermatocidal heat than, say, Corn Snakes or Yellow Rats (in whose habitat, by the way, it's even hot in the shade!)." Anyway, that was my thought process, and I'm glad I could apply that and pass it on to other keepers (and actually hear that it helped!). 