What is a good age to breed a female veiled? How do I care for veiled eggs?
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Veiled Mating Age
veiledcham
Jun 12, 2004 07:58 PM
Replies (1)
kokopelli
Jun 13, 2004 10:09 AM
I most cases I wait until a female is about one year old before breeding her. That way she has finished most of her growing and her bones are fully developed. Don't introduce her to the male until she has receptive colors. Sky blue markings on her casque and along her spine. Even if receptive she will often gape and hiss at the male. You need to be careful here because if she is not ready to mate the male can get POed and attack her or vice-versa. I had a large male that broke my female's back when he bit her. If she shows a nice placid green color and turns and walks away from the male, things are fine.
When the female is ready to dig she usually looks like a bag of marbles. She will be very restless pacing all over her cage and frequently going to the bottom of the cage. For a digging substrate, I use a small trash can (about 15" deep) filled with moist Bed-A-Beast. You want the Bed-A-Beast to be moist but not wet. Test it with your fingers. If you can press it together
with your fingers and it doesn't break apart it is about right. This is to keep her tunnel from collapsing on her. Everybody uses something different depending upon what works for them, play sand is also a popular digging substrate.
As far as incubating the Eggs, again, everybody has their own method depending upon what works for them. Remove the eggs carefully from the digging substrate. Try to take them out of the trash can just the way they were layed. Don't turn them, and place them in a plastic (tupperware) type container half filled with moist vermiculite. There is a small air pocket inside the egg, if you turn the egg too much, you can suffocate the embryo. Give the eggs about an inch difference in spacing.
I don't use an incubator for Veiled Eggs because they incubate just fine in the top of my closet. You can incubate with temperatures between 72 and 82 degrees. I shoot for about 80 degrees and at least 60 % humidity. With these numbers, my eggs hatch in about 200 days. Also for the vermiculite, I use about 70% water by volume weight of vermiculite. Good luck.
