Reptile & Amphibian Forums

after some isp issues, i'm back...

all the babies are still doing good. they now eat harveser ants with little fear. a few of them have rather distinct personalities. it's very interesting to watch them do their thing, i love it. i'll come home from a long day at work, pour myself a beer, and watch the little guys strategize on some ants for an hour. ...always good times.

one baby in paticular has such a big appitite that it weighs 3gms when all the others weigh around 2gms. the mother is doing good as well. i keep reading that p.hernandesi are hard to keep, but mine are doing fantastic. they're too cool.

also, i do have an '05 arizona hunting licence. though i never thought horny toads would be something that was "hunted".

Those babies are looking wonderful!

These horned lizards are a rare site where i am from. It is very nice to see them breeding and doing well for you.

Please continue to take more pictures if you can

~*jess*~

These babies look adorable!!!!! Can you take any video of them? I absolutely believe you sit and watch them for an hour. I know exactly what you mean. How old are the babies? Can you share a little more of the history behind these? I'm hoping maybe you can add a few of your photos to Cable's website as these are truly amazing photos.

THey look SO HEALTHY!!!

Keep up the excellent work!

Keep the photos and updates coming!!!

i have taken video of them before. i could take some more, but i would have to email it to you unless someone feels like hosting it.

but until then...

I am curious to see what will happen witht he littel poig that is eating ferociously, it is a fact that the females seem to get bidder and usually eat like pigs, so it will be interesting to see if this turns out to be a she?

Also currently they are doing well and look great, could you share with us the temps you have these at, and type of lighting. Also one of the big things with these lizards is hydration, so are you spraying the rocks and they are lapping water or are you giving them the eye dropper also are you using a supplement. If you are I think mineral-all is an excellent supplement. Also what size cage do you have them in. Are you feeding them other insects as well? I would recommend that sense they are well started not to overdo on crickets, sounds like you got them going on ants and that's fantastic, have you tried mini-mealworms? Cable uses these I beleive, and I have some Solare that I fed the mini's too and they seem to relish them as well as wax worms, and I also catch insects in a "bug napper" and feed some of those from time to time as well. However the great majority of their insect intake is ants and they seem to be doing well. Were these from Arizona? If I remember right?
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Phrynosoma.com

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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

i have always wondered about the sex of the babies. the voracious baby could very well could be a female. i've read about the sex of ovarious babies being determined by the temperature, but i can't seem to find any info on live born horned lizards. i assume it would just be a male/female mix...?

i ordered a mercury vapor bulb over the internet over a month ago, but it never arrived. so i've been using a 7%uvb florescent with a 100watt uva incandescent. same set-up for babies and mother. i plan on replacing this with a couple mercury vapor bulbs when i have the cash. the temperature has been 65-75 night and 75-85 day. i keep the basking spot a little cooler than "normal", at 100 degrees max. the babies have been living in a large rubber maid bin turned terrarium. i'm actually in the process of building a larger more permanent home for them. something around 3x3feet. in the long run i don't plan on keeping but one or two of the babies.

as of now they eat harvester ants and small crickets. i wasn't aware that mini-mealworms existed as a food item, any idea where i could order some? the mother herself doesn't care much for mealworms, she pretty much refuses them now. i give them water a couple times a week by spraying a rock in their enclosure. some will run up and start licking it up. while some others like to just get sprayed and lick it off of themselves. so what is "mineral-all"? vitamin water?

i collected them from the mogollon rim in arizona at aprox. 7500feet. a lot cooler than here in phoenix.

the big baby:

Do you know which species of harvester ant you are feeding? Red or black?
Thanks
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Phrynosoma.Com

i buy them from antsalive.com, they don't give the specific species, but the ants themselves are all deep red.

I know that they ship different ants at different times. Any chance you can post a pic of the ants too.
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Phrynosoma.Com

you know, now that you mention it, one time a batch of ants seemed darker in color. though i couldn't tell if it was a diffrent species or just color variation. here's a picture of what i curently have.

Excellent photos! These look like Pogonomymex californicus.
Mine have eaten these as well as rugosus (to a lessor extent).
These are not so much native to their habitat, but are very similar to P. occidentalis, which are in their habitat.
Thanks for the post.
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Phrynosoma.Com

What a little porker that one is! THe mini-mealworms have a link in our web-site, also wax worms when they get a little bigger. The mineral-all is a reptile vitiman supplement that is a fine powder and you put your crickets or mealworms in a small baggy with a small amount of powder and shake it and the bugs get coated with the mineral supplements and when they eat the insects they get the vitimans. Mini-mealworms can be put in a samll low lipped container or jar lid with a little mineral all on the bottom with 20 or so mini's and as the lizard feed on the worms they lick up some of the powder. If you do this then you don't need to shake and bake them. While I use another brand, a friend of mine uses this pretty much exclusively on all his lizards and they always look great. I would vary their diet as much as possible from time to time. WHat your doing right now looks like it's working well at the moment. So you have the bask spot close to 100? Do they actually bask under the 100 degree bask spot or do they just get close to it for warmth? Many people have not had success with these and so we are interested in any other tid bits you can share, hopefully your lizards will continue to grow and fatten up.
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Phrynosoma.com

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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

well i should have said 90-95 avarage basking spot tempiture, with a maximum temp of 100 degrees. the cool end is 70-80 depending on the ambient house tempiture.(65-75 at night) the climate i caught them in was a lot cooler than the desert, i basicly just attempted to mimic that. i've seem distribution maps with horned lizards up into canada. that's amazing, i'd imagine the basking spot for those would be around 75-85 degrees?

All I ask is Please, please,plase . . . .be careful who they go to . . . they look so good and you've worked so hard to end up having them go to someone who doesn't know as much and won't work as hard and then they'll end up dead. Please just make sure it's someone experienced. They're absolutely gorgeous!!! I'd hate to see a sad ending to this.

This is quite impressive!
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Phrynosoma.Com