Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We have an aligator lizard that we found in our house. It has its full tail and was very clean (no mites or tics). We decided to keep it and set it up with a nice home in a ten gallon tank. It shed its skin a couple of weeks ago (which was really cool). It has always had a really good appetite (3-5 medium to large crickets a day) until now. I think it is ready to lay eggs. It seems fattter. Its been digging a lot. I've read almost all of the other posts that said these were all the right signs. But I can't seem to remember anyone commenting on loss of appetite. When my wife was pregnant, she ate like a horse. I'm worried that it suddenly stopped eating. Its only been a day, but crickets never lasted more than five minutes in the tank. Is this normal? or is something wrong?

By the way, my lizard looks almost identical to lightning hunter's lizard.

Many lizards will lose their appetite as laying time approaches. The digging means she's probably looking for a good spot. Moisten some of the substrate, or set up a container full of moist substrate so that she can lay.

-Alice

I've been reading a lot of these strings and have tried to set her up as well as I can according to the information I've been given. I'm wondering how long does it take from when they 'start digging and stop eating' to actually laying eggs? And also, when the time comes to remove the eggs, is O.K. to handle them with you're hands?

By the way, I've noticed that there are several people, especially you that have given a lot of useful information. I appreciate your time and effort.

If your lizard is indeed gravid, I'd expect eggs within the week. Some als do just like to dig, however.

It's okay to handle the eggs in order to remove them. You just want to be sure you don't change their orientation and put them in the incubation container in the same position in which they were laid.

-Alice