Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All,

I posted a while back about one of our female cornutum who was eating a ton but not putting on any weight. I was worried about possible persistent parasites even though she had been treated.

Well, we ended up deciding that she did not have parasites and we put her with our smallest male for breeding back in May. She laid 25ish eggs on June 19th. I thought she was going to double clutch because she gained so much weight after laying the first clutch. She's now by far the biggest cornutum I've ever seen at about 80 grams, nearly twice the size of the rest of the collection. I think it's probably too late in the year for a second clutch. She continues to eat like a pig, still about 3 to 4 times what the other lizards eat. I thought for sure she'd back off the ants a little once she started taking an occasional wax worm (they're so filling), but she didn't. Randomness.

Most of the eggs went bad. My hunch is that some supplimental calcium may fix that next year. We set them up as suggested in Phrynosoma.com and other places. Temps in the incubator ranged from about 82-86.

I had nearly given up on the remaining 4 because it's been so long (58 days) and I thought they had a 45 day incubation. This morning I found that one of the eggs looked slit and empty. The lizard had buried into the vermiculite. Very cute. When should I expect it to start eating? I've got flightless fruit flies and some small ants from Life Studies (look like fire ants to my very untrained eye but aren't). We set out some termite traps but these are still empty.

Thanks,

Aaron

Congrats Aaron!
How are the other 3 doing? I'm curious what you mean by "Went bad"?

They should eat within a couple of days. You can leave him in the incubator for a day or so.
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Phrynosoma.Com

Some of the eggs got moldy, some shriveled up. All but 8 or 9 didn't really look that good to start out with. Not that I know what a lizard egg is supposed to look like. But most of them were yellow and not-totally egg shaped. Maybe they had one flat side or were already somewhat indented.

Too late on leaving it in the incubator. I set it up as soon as I found it. Spent most of yesterday buried, all but about one hour of trying to walk. Today it drank really well and then basked and roamed for 4-5 hours. Never saw it eat.

Actually we're up to 5 adults now. Maude is about 80 grams, Delbert 45, Haywood 50, Pat 60, and Cletus 28. Cletus is the dad so that could be another reason why it wasn't the best batch of eggs. Pat is normally around 40 grams. I thought with all the weight gain this spring she'd be poppin out some eggs too, but I guess Delbert didn't get the job done.

Aaron