I have never bred a live birthing species before and I cannot articulate just how dang excited I am about this
These things are so tiny (those are my ten-year-old’s hands). I spent thirty minutes looking around the cage and only managed to find four before I had to get to work. The girls are going to make periodic checks over the course of the day and I will scour the cage tonight
And my second girl is due to drop in another few weeks and she is even bigger than this girl was
More/better pic to come after I find them all and get the good camera out
Actually breed, not so much. Establish the almost obligate sleeping lizard feeding babies is the real challenge. Not going to lie, kinda scared about that part
Better men than me have lost entire clutches so I am prepared for failure. But I fully intend to give it my absolute best effort. And who knows, maybe I will be the one to crack the code
I was told it could take 215 days from post-ovulation shed, which was back on 18Feb for this girl. But if you start counting from when I first saw what I believed was breeding activity, that was back in Nov 2023
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Fun fact, baby Candoia shed within the first few hours after birth. That was how I knew things had gotten really REAL, finding a couple itty-bitty sheds after seeing what looked like it could have been afterbirth
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And now for the good pictures taken with my real camera and new macro-capable lens (that I am still figuring out LOL)
Loving the, what appears to be grape vine(?) branch. They all look like “indubitably” is their favorite adverb. The red ones almost have a glow to them, I love it!
Speaking of “pancake” the last three were located by my youngest who had the exquisite foresight to think that these little brutes would squeeze in to the 3-5mm gap that exists between the top of the cork backing and the ceiling of the cage. Let me tell you how frustrating it is to try and extract a squish worm from a tiny crack without hurting it. It took 45 minutes to get them to come out
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HA! Good eye. Youngest had just finished snacking on some grapes and I took the stem as she was reaching to throw it in the garbage. Thought it would be a perfect perch for them
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You are the second person to comment on their slightly “snobbish” appearance
I did indeed!
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Been continuing to hunt around the cage but have not found anyone new so I think the eleven I have are the final count for this clutch. Now comes the hard part
And also waiting for the next, bigger, female to drop in about a month or so
