Reptile & Amphibian Forums

OK, so I won't be asking any more questions about her laying.....except for one. I just got home from work and checked her immediately. She is at the bottom of her laying box under all the damp spagnum moss. I decided to uncover her because I didn't check her closely before I left for work and she was in the box then. I see one HUGH egg. Longer than a chicken egg but, of course, cylindrical in shape. I could only see one. She was not moving so I covered her up and replaced the lid. I know she is full of eggs. How will I know when she is finished laying? Will she exit the laying box? Or will she be protective of the eggs and want to stay with them? I don't want to mess things up for her, so once again, HELP! Thanks all. My heart is beating kinda fast and I'm excited, can you tell?

In general, I think that the accepted way of doing things is give her space and time, when she leaves the laying box and looks "thin" she'll be done and you can pull out the eggs.

Last year was my first year breeding. I had two clutches... one from my cal king, one from my blotched king. My experiences with both were very different.

The first to lay was Queenie, my cal king. Woke up in the morning and she was curled around 8 beautiful eggs. She was quite slender and seemed quite obviously to be done. I took some nice maternal pictures of her curled around the eggs, and then encouraged her to go back into her enclosure. Gave her a nice mouse too, and she enjoyed that.

The second to lay was Pandora. When I checked on her she was just "spitting out" her fifth egg. She had four viable eggs, and one slug before I saw her. Perhaps defying any sort of advice I might have gotten, I pulled out the egg laying container and snapped photos of the rest of the process. Pandora didn't seem to mind my presence, so I continued. If she had been disturbed or distressed in any way I would have let her be. I could tell she still had a number of egg masses left inside. I watched while she laid 3 more eggs and I could tell that she was done because the large masses were all gone. I enjoyed that time to sort of "commune" with her (took a good hour and a half for her to lay the eggs) and I don't think that she really noted any sort of disturbance. Once she finished up she quickly went to slither out of the container, so I put her back in her cage with a yummy mouse, and she was fine.

You think the waiting until the laying is the hard part, you ain't seen NUTTIN yet! Now you have to wait until they hatch! ARGH! Takes forever! Especially when you're not working the last 30 days of the incubation!
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~Sasheena

So, here is egg #3. I am shocked to see the size of her eggs. I figure the larger they are the fewer she will lay. She is laying one egg every 35 minutes. Is that about average? This is so much fun.

np