Posted by:
pamnsam94
at Thu May 29 14:34:59 2014 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by pamnsam94 ]
Well, it's been a week now since my female chuck (Box Canyon, CA locale) laid 9 eggs. None of the eggs have mold on them yet, some of them have firmed up, taking over 4 days to do so,(none of them were plump when laid) and some of them seem firmer but still are slightly dented.
The possible fathers are nice red-backs from the Sentinel Plains AZ area. I would have preferred to breed a pair of chucks from the same locale, but at least a good number of males from the Box Canyon area have a decent amount of orange on their backs so any potential male offspring have a good chance of developing nice coloration.
I also did something not recommended at all. Don't be too harsh with me. I bought two red-backed males (the Sentinel Plains locale) from a seller that had housed the two males together in an outdoor pen. Both of them had come out of brumation earlier this spring. I had fully intended to house the males separately, but from the day I received them, I put them in the same indoor enclosure with the female.
Both of the males have been getting along just fine. I've seen no sign of aggression between the two though I know that can potentially change any day. They both developed a lot of waxy secretions from their femoral pores, and I couldn't really tell if one of them was dominant based on their behavior. However, after a month or so, I finally witnessed one of them doing pushups but couldn't tell who the behavior was directed towards, the other male or the female. I never witnessed any mating, but maybe I should assume that the male that did the pushups is the father (if the eggs turn out to be fertile that is), even though that is the only time I witnessed him doing pushups, until a few days ago when I put them outside for the first time. Within a minute of putting him outside, he started doing pushups like crazy. ![](images/smiles/smile.gif)
Most people here and on the Chuckwalla and North American Desert Lizard Keepers Facebook pages seem to be saying that if the eggs are bad, they will mold over within a few days. However, I once had a clutch of four-horned chameleon eggs and all but one went bad around three to four months (5 months is full term). I opened every one of those eggs after they went bad, and not only did I not see any sign of embryogenesis, but I didn't seen any sign of vascularization whatsoever. Four-horned chameleon eggs are not known to go through a diapause stage. I assume the eggs were not fertile but somehow avoided getting mold, etc. However, one egg did go full term then when bad. I opened it up after it was obvious it wasn't going to hatch, fully expecting to find the inside the same as the other eggs. To my surprise though, I found a fully formed neonate that apparently was simply too weak to hatch. Fortunately, I've had many other clutches that developed normally.
So, finally, my question is, have any of you experienced a similar situation with chuckwalla eggs, infertile eggs going bad a week, month or even two months before going bad?
Thanks, Perry
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