Hey Luke. How is life down under? I am assuming that it is a bit cold there about now, and I am thinking that that may play a role in why your skinks are not eating. Blotchies are similar to the other BTS in their care and personalities, They are just very rare, and a bit expensive ($900.00 to $1500.00). I worked with a group of them, and had some breeding, but was not able to produce babies. Part of the problem was that I went in with a then friend on 6 of them. Four of the 6 were very nice. We each took 3 (2 nice ones and one not so nice). He ended up baking the nicest one of all of them. After that he took one of his females that was paired with the now dead male, and one of my extra males that was not much to look at color wise, but doing very well, and we sold the pair. This left him with one sub adult, and me with a nice pair. My male tried to breed so hard, but was not successful. He would grab the female, and pull her around into position, then when he was satisfied with their position, he would scratch her with one of his back legs on top of the base of her tail, and she would in turn lift it up (receptive behavior). Then he would thrust and.... Boom!.... Nothing! He could not seem to get it to work. I know he was a male, due to the behavior, and the seminal plugs that he dropped. He just seemed to need viagra. My friend then offered to let me use his one last blotchie on breeding loan. He would get half of the babies, I would house feed and maintain the animal. That sounded good to me. I figured if it was a male, I could use him instead of my male, and if a female... Well you can never have too many females. I worked with the trio for another year and a half, and was able to determine that the loan animal was a female when I introduced it to my male, and witnessed them breed right before my eyes! I was stoked! My male bred my female once, but bred numerous times with the loan animal. I called my buddy, and he seemed excited. However, about 6 weeks after that he called me and said that he had sold the animal that was on loan to me, and asked if I would send it to the guy for him. I explained to him about what happens when skinks breed, but he just wanted to sell it. So I sent it off in disgust, and I later sold my pair to Edward here on the forum. Ed got some infertile ova last year, and later sold them. I know, I know; long boring story. I will send Cindy some of my blotched pics to see if she will be so kind as to post them for me.
