Egg Updates

Tonight while feeding (and checking lay boxes like I do nightly) I was *thrilled* to find 2 beautiful, perfectly calcified eggs in Panic and Liebchen's laybox. Since Liebchen laid a dud less than two weeks ago, these are finally some more from Panic! :D I'm very excited, her first clutch of the season only had one fertile egg - but these two both have beautiful cheerios!

I candled the other eggs I've got incubating to see what's going on and it's a good thing I had started out with my happy two brand-new fertile eggs, because otherwise it was not good news. The remaining egg from Liebchen's first clutch of the season is not good either. It's hardly developed at all. I will continue to incubate for awhile longer it but I have no hope for it. And then I candled her next set, and sadly they did not look good either. :( Both appeared to have developed to a point (I could see where there are eyes), but have since stopped developing.

This happened to me last year with a virgin female - I ended up cutting the eggs open since they never molded and I found partially developed embryos that had simply stopped developing for some reason or another. I'm guessing it will be the same situation this year unfortunately. And since for her last clutch Liebchen laid only 1 egg, and an infertile one at that, I put her in for another successful copulation with Inigo tonight, just to see if we can get some babies at all for the year. The female last year produced 6 fertile eggs - 4 hatched healthy babies and 2 I cut open and found embryos. The second clutch from Liebchen developed further than the first, so I'm crossing my fingers that third time is a charm!

I was a little concerned that perhaps it was a problem with Inigo since there was 0% success with Liebchen so far. However, that concern vanished - Panic seems to be having more success since I saw the baby in her egg move tonight. :) There was a very obvious little curled tail and it moved around quite a bit. So I was thrilled to see that! Hopefully the two tonight will develop just as well. Inigo is such a beautiful gecko (as are the ladies) and I really want to produce some of his offspring! Though I gotta mention, he's so weird when breeding... he never lets go on his own so when I finally got them separated tonight he ended up popping out both hemipenes. I'm hoping he get's them all tucked away safely. It was certainly strange looking, I haven't seen that before.

Also tried for Pongo and Perdi again, unsuccessfully. He's just such a lover, not a fighter, and she's the opposite. He immediately starts chirping and licking but as soon as he starts touching her she bites like crazy at his face. A few rounds of that and he won't even try anymore (not that I can blame him)! I am dying for some of his kids so I'm going to keep trying with them - who knows, maybe we'll catch her on a good day. She *has* been digging in her laybox again so maybe there's still hope without another copulation, but we'll see. If worst comes to worst I may breed her to Wesley - he cannot be deterred, and he always produces spotty kids. I haven't been disappointed with any of his offspring and it might be interesting to see what that cross would produce.

Cross your fingers for eggs! Lots of healthy, fertile eggs! :D A happy stable temperature is definitely making a difference, everybody is even eating more. That's a huge weight off my shoulders.