...after disappearing for a year or so.
Mating has started in the last week or so in my colony. Last night the pictured male cinctum bred with a beautiful female three times. The first “lock-up” was for 30 min, the second was 57 min and the last was 1 hr 30 min. It started at 9:40 pm yesterday and finished by 2 am this morning. It is not unusual to have multiple copulations over a period of several hours.
Six females have bred so far and I expect the peak of mating to occur over the next week or so.
I am working on a new Gila caging system—I’ll try to post photos in the next month or so. I’m finishing up the prototype now. It consists of a six-unit stack with an “above ground” section and a “below ground” section. Each unit has a built in IR video camera and IR light source to digitally record breeding (I have 75 videos feeds to various parts of my new Gila rooms). I have video set up in my current caging (although not quite as eloquently as in the new cages). That’s how I got the above data. I hate not knowing exactly what is going on with the animals. It is an amazing help to be able to see the follicle size on ultrasound and document all breeding behavior on video. A female’s receptiveness to breeding attempts by a male appears to be pretty tightly tied to the size of her follicles. By measuring the follicle size via ultrasound it makes it easier to know when to pair up each female. It eliminates a lot of lost time and effort in a pretty narrow window of opportunity. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of working with these animals.
In the end of February I had a film crew here from New Zealand to film a show on Gila monsters for Animal Planet. There is an airdate scheduled for the end of June. You may want to keep your eye out for it—it should be fun. I haven’t seen the finished program yet, but you should be able to get at least a glimpse of my new Gila rooms.
Best of luck to everyone this season.
Cheers,
Mark
