Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm pretty sure she did it early Tuesday, but I didn't find them until tonight. Seven look good, one is dead, but even that one may well have just been crushed by me digging around. Hopefully I found them all; I didn't do a complete sand removal because she's had a rough week so I'm trying to do all the sneaky maintenance-type stuff using a red light while they're all sleeping.

I had no idea how little she still was until after she laid. Not just overall chubbiness, but actual growth, or rather lack thereof; the other two have kept on growing, but all of Chica's food turned right into eggs apparently. Even Pancho, who was hatched 3 months later than she was, is now bigger than her. And Lupe, who was fairly similar in size to Chica until recently, looks like she'd be their mother!

Chica's tired and she had some bowel issues, but seems okay, just littler and skinnier than I'd prefer. Fortuntely she kept eating even while gravid.

I bought a Hova bator and a package of Hatch-Rite at last month's herp expo, so I was kind of, sort of, ready to go. This is scary though, and not just the eggs. At least there's another expo on Sunday, so I can load up on silkworms, baby hornworms, Phoenixes if they have any; I'll give her a pinkie, too, if she'll eat it. Her appetite's been okay, and she even passed up hand-feeding today and waited for me to let the crickets go so she could chase after tham, but she's so skinny, and she runs out of stamina too easily now.

-----
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled "Hognose" (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bullsnake (Winkle)
1.2 2008 Eastern Collared Lizards (Pancho, Lupe, and Chica)

Made it through okay, except for being so thin.

These little girls go through ALOT of wear and tear during breeding season, grabbed, bitten, thrown down in some cases, then have to go through passing all those eggs, and then looking so SCAREY to us when done as everything has been Zapped from them. I know , it makes ya feel bad when you see them after.

Give her a nice little pat( job well done) and nice treats, time to fill out, and hope all those little eggs she layed will hatch soon.

-----
PHEve / Eve

The mating itself wasn't hard on her, at least. Pancho can make sort of a nuisance of himself getting excited and running over everybody else, but he's not really aggresive. Chica was okay with mating a few times, so they mated. Lupe got annoyed and clamped lightly onto his foot for about a minute (Lupe's been miffed at me, too, a couple of times; she bites to communicate, not to actually hurt,) so they didn't mate. There were four selling points for choosing Pancho: he's captive-bred, he's a nice aqua, he's not related to the females, and he was significantly smaller and younger than they were (although he's been growing while Chica was gravid) so they wouldn't have to deal with a large aggressive male their first year.
Actually, speaking of Pancho, the day after Chica laid her eggs and was feeling rough it really seemed like I saw protective behavior. What with the dehydration, the cloacal blockage from the eggs, and the digging around instead of basking, her digestion wasn't a hundred per cent, and I had to reach under her and pull out a superworm husk that was sort of stuck. She'd been going crazy trying to get it to finish clearing, and was a little nervous about letting me under there, but was obviously glad that I had once it was gone. But while I was doing that, Pancho ran over and stayed next to her for several hours... and staying in one place is NOT what Pancho does. He didn't seem specifically angry or defensive or even concerned; he just suddenly felt that he sort of needed to start hanging closer to her.
Either that, or he was just following the one that was getting all the attention because he figured that's where the food would be. I don't know.
-----
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled "Hognose" (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bullsnake (Winkle)
1.2 2008 Eastern Collared Lizards (Pancho, Lupe, and Chica)