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I sure wish I could report some good news. All of my armata eggs were duds! My capra eggs were duds! Only things cooking that look good are the coronata eggs! I am down to 1.2 armata, the big male, the submissive female and the tiny female.

I guess that's what happens when you work too much!

By the way, my last gravid armata was pretty fat but her belly seems to be shrinking now. When I palpated her this morning I would swear the eggs are shrinking. There didn't seem to be many to start with. Do you suppose she is re-absorbing them? Why would all of the others die egg bound and this one, the submissive female, survive, if in fact she does?

I lost my largest female this weekend with her second clutch. I opened her and will report that the liver was what I am accustomed to seeing as a normal liver color in any animal I have ever butchered, not particularly dark by the standards of any I have ever seen. She was different from the other females I lost in that she did have some fat layers just as I had expected to find, as she looked so healthy. There were no egg follicles developing indicating that this would have been her final clutch. There were 16 eggs. The eggs on one side were all congealed together in a white waxy substance. In the other side they appeared to be normal. All of the eggs were gone, already hard and rubbery.

This has been a very hard winter for me! These last two females and the coronata female that I lost were all in a glass tank with moss and oak leaves over peat and coir fiber. There are 2 fluorescent tubes in the peak for daytime light and a 25 watt bulb on one end 24/7 for heat. They had a variety of mealworms, roaches, and nightcrawlers for feeders and their supplements were liquid calcium with D2 syrup and Stickytongue Farms Mineral-I. I was also spraying to make sure they were drinking daily. For future reference, did I miss anything?
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

Damnit-froggie…

I don’t know what to say, it seems like all have been covered.

You are missing something and I wish I knew what?

No dough armata are a difficult specie, they stress easy.

I feel spraying is stressful, but this I already mentioned.
I feel we must provide them a chance to use higher temps, this too I mentioned.
I know any handling will disrupt there cycling, this too I mentioned.

The husbandry of cb armatas will not be problematic, but the wild imports must be left alone, when I separate mine, I do it when they sleep, I don’t even handle them all I do is transfer them on any branch they are sleeping on.

Also my studies show no need to over do it with hydration, they need to dry regularly, preferably once a day for them to shed properly. This doesn’t mean to keep them dry, no reptiles should be kept dry. I feel retained sheds are detrimental to gravid females, I intend to study this in dept this up coming year.

I hope you will find the culprit and solve your problem pronto!

One thing I do witch seems to help a lot, is hand feed them with a bowl, of course stressed out females will not feed from an approaching bowl regardless of the goodies inside.

In time when left alone they grow use to your presence and allow cage work without showing sings of stress.

A lizards that acts defensive is not relaxed, doesn’t matter if your spraying or handling it, stress affects the body in more ways then we can understand, adrenaline is produced in rapid burst to allow flight, but it takes a long time for the system to process it.
How this affects captive? For start each time a female is stressed her hart runs like a marathon, burning all nutrients needed for egg production, she then need to get these and calcium from her own bones and muscles, we as keepers do not see this until its too late, this is the reason I hand feed my females at this stage.

The simple fact that armata have the most developed spike armoury, is indicative of a specie heavily preyed upon, lizards develop defence mechanism when they need it most, be it functional or ornamental, the function remains to discourage predation.

This is how you treat peoples who try to help you, ignoring them?

Jobi, I don't mean to be rude, just that we started the real move on the store on Christmas Morning. We packed the first 4 display cases and broke them down and moved them across and rebuilt them Christmas night. The next day we went full swing into packing mode with 3 ladies and 2 teens helping while hubby and miscellaneous men and boys began taking apart the cases and walls here and rebuilding them there.

We have almost completed the move in less than 2 weeks. All of the 6' and 8' display cases are up, the partitions are up the floor display cases are moved and the 10,000 pieces of our merchandise are packed and moved along with the merchandise of 40 consigners and a handful of dealers including one who has 600 sq ft of display area. All that remains is my brother-in-law who has about 100 sq ft of display area, lots of small items, and my 2 pcs and my office things.

My landlord has turned into a real jerk and as a result we are determined to be out by this Sunday. Then we will be very busy unpacking so we can get back to the business of selling again.

I wish I could have the luxury of being home all day to tend to my lizards but I have only an hour in the morning and then a bit more in the evenings to check them again. I was devastated when I opened the incubator and realized that at 3 months there was no shadow of an embryo in the armata eggs. I opened one to verify and found it to be hard and rubbery. My check of the different clutches proved all of the eggs to be bad. After losing 4 females, 3 armata, 1 coronata, I am very upset. But, the store is my bread & butter and I have many other people who are depending on me for their income there as well. That is what I have to push on right now. I have not been on the computer most days at all other than to ring up sales on my sales PC. The post I made for this thread was a rare post when I was up past my bedtime as I am again tonight. I will probably have a migraine in the morning as a result of my lack of sleep.

This store is taking precedence over many things. When I went to my orthopedic DR last time he wanted me to let him scope my knee because the cortisone shot has done no good. Within a month it is back to catching and going out on me. The x-rays don't show any damage and there isn't any significant arthritis so he feels that scoping is the only way he is going to find out what is really wrong. I can't do that though until the store is set back up! And then I have to train someone to cover for me before I can take the time off!

So, I think you can see that I am not being rude; I just haven't had the time to get on the PC. Maybe I shouldn't have posted my update when I didn't have the time to get back on and follow up. For that I will apologize!

I will not post again until my store is up and running and I have the time to check here on a regular basis if that is what you prefer.
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html