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best thing is it's from my crazy lookin female henk who hasnt given me any eggs till now. first time i actually got to see a female laying too. looked around after i got home from work, then noticed a head poppin out from the moss. got pics too!

We are WAITING !
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PHEve/ Eve

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i didnt wanna keep you up waiting all night, cuz i knew you would eve!

here ya go!

well, the good news is it didnt take her long to finish laying the eggs. and actually, as soon as i noticed she wasnt laying anymore, i noticed that her and the male are pretty much sealing the deal for the next clutch of eggs.

apart from that is where it gets weird. if you remember, the last clutch of henkeli eggs i pulled out was cracked, both eggs. in this one, i found one of the eggs was cracked. its real weird, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to mend it? luckily this time i havent noticed anything oozing/leaking out yet. this also leads me to wonder if the last clutch i got was actually from this female too, and not the other as i had believed. tonight was my first time actually seeing any of my leaftails actually laying. i know ive seen obvious large white blobs in my original female's belly past the first clutch, so im thinking maybe shes just doing a damn good job of burying them, and maybe i need to think twice and start digging for the eggs. more than likely im gonna try that tomorrow after i get off of work. after that ill get you another pic, eve!

so please offer suggestions if you have any for mending this egg, i would hate to lose 3 eggs in a row. i cant figure out what it is she's doing that causes this, but i really wanna do my best to fix it because it's not worth all this effort to get them to breed and lay ferts just to have something tiny like this ruin it all!

I heard that you can use nail polish to fix cracks in eggs. You should definatly try and find out what is causing the eggs to crack. I know pietschmanni eggs have very thick shells and are difficult to crack even when you're trying to crack them.
-Matt

Potentially too little calcium. Try using a different calcium supplement, I use Trical and it works wonders.

well, i usually switch it up with 2 or 3 different cricket dusts. i've got minerall, jurassical, and herpcare cricket dusts, and ive never had the problem with any of my other gex. maybe ill pick up something new today.

I know of that some sulcatta tortoise breeders use a little bit of vaseline and some plastic wrap, but I was thinking maybe try something like parafilm and a water based lubricant, ky or something of the sort. It wouldn't hurt to try that.

In a reptiles magazine article from a few last year, there was a decent article about that. I'll see if I can find it.

Jason

What about that new plastic wrap thats supposed to stick to anything? If you could carefully cut it to cover the crack, maybe that would work?
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thats the same idea of parafilm and might work a bit better. I would just be careful of how hard its pressed onto the shell so not to crack it any more.

yeah i used that glad press and seal plastic wrap on one of my henkels eggs, it was about 115 days old though. i poked a hole through the air space and saw that the baby was still alive. the egg shell was super thin but i sealed it up with that press and seal, which i think would be a little better than parafilm. parafilm tends to be a bit tougher and takes more strength to spread. he hatched out about two weeks later, it seemed fine but slightly dehydrated. i kept it alive for about a month but i might have drown him with the eye dropper, he was too weak. i have a few good pics, i ll try to post them if i have time before work.

i had a few henkels eggs like that, a protruding hair line crack. the one that hatched had a dent in it , but no cracks. the ones that had those hair line cracks in them didnt make it, im guessing that they were infertile.

i'm wondering if neosporin will work. im thinking maybe the antibiotics in that will help it out, so im gonna give that a whirl.

hey mike, i dont think that its a lack of calcium or nutrition at all(with the hair line cracks). if it has been your newer female layin those eggs, youre lucky. this is the first season you had her and shes producing eggs already. usually it takes them atleast a year in your possesion to produce inferts. when i saw her, she looked good and i think the last couple eggs she ll lay this season will be good, fertile eggs. My female layed a bunch of good looking infertile eggs all last year and the last one or two were fertile. she has been gravid for like over two months(remember when i showed you the profile pick of her). she just dropped one egg last night and its real heavy and looks good. i know shes got three more in her cause two nights ago i took her out and asked her what was wrong with her,cuz i saw four big eggs in her. i told her i was gonna take her to the vet, she must have taken that as a threat to her life so she just layed the egg.

thats awesome to hear joe. i really didnt believe it was a calcium or othewise nutritional thing, because i've been giving her plenty of dusted crix since i got her, and she has been in top shape since day 1. as for the cracks, i still just cant tell where they're coming from, because i saw her laying that night and picked them out a few hours afterward. the good news is that i've had the eggs out a few days now, and no bad smell. hopefully the neosporin is working. i havent bothered checking up-close because id like to let it be for a while, but im hoping that maybe it will mend. it was just one egg this time instead of both. plus the guy at the pet store i bought her from told my buddy that first noticed her for me that she had already dropped a few good eggs for her previous owner. i just dont know how recently or how many. gimme about 5 months or so and hopefully ill get an answer. one good thing though, it shouldnt be too long before my first clutch of henkeli eggs hatches out, only a month or two left on those. im pretty excited, but as you saw i dont know how in the world im gonna make room for all these new hatchlings. im thinking about selling off my cresteds just to make room, even though thats only two tanks right there. but if i dont get a job around here and move back to charlotte, if my parents offer to let me stay back home for a while that will definitely give me much more space to work with, and no stingy roommates to tell me that the AC is making the house too cold. they're a bunch of pansies, if you ask me!!!

and here's a fresh pic of shadow and my unnamed female makin sweet sweet love.

Now we all KNOW ! LMAO

Nice though!
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PHEve/ Eve

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The stuff that forma a liquid barrier like a bandaid ob=ver a wound.
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PHEve/ Eve

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well, the last pair of cracked eggs i got and tried to cover with plastic wrap still went bad like overnight. so far, the neosporin seems to be doing the trick, and next time i will really consider trying that liquid bandage stuff, it sounds like it could easily patch a crack. of course ill keep everyone updated with progress.

and on a side note, NIN tomorrow night in atlanta!!!

WOOHOO!!

(i hope no eggs hatch out tomorrow night...im about due for some satanics as well as some cresteds....

She really looks cool , congratulations on the 2 little eggies!

Thats EGGSTRAORDINARY !
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PHEve/ Eve

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