Kiddos leaving the nest...

I always am a bit sad when shipping geckos off, or passing them off to their new owners. My little ones have always had a lot of time put into them and were definitely not cared for as just "one more" in my collection. Each gecko I own is special to me. But these two are going to wonderful homes where I know I will receive updates, so that makes the "hand-off" much easier!

First went a juvenile gargoyle, currently unnamed. She went to the home who bought my leachie a few weeks ago. I wasn't suprised when their wonderful family came back - the mother fell in love with Frank (the kiddo's father) when she came to get Gherkin and both her and her son were very interested in the gargoyles. If you haven't heard - Rhacs are like potato chips, you can't just have one! (I'm living proof. It all started with one here too.) Enjoy your new home, little one! Here she is fully fired, though this is an older photo:


The second little one to leave the nest was a holdback of mine, but I'm trying to thin out my holdbacks because I have outstanding ones from last year and recent hatchlings from my lavender project that I think will be equally amazing. It was a true orange brindle with reverse pinning (seems like you don't see that color so much, it's either red or yellow, not a true orange...)/end muse. This is going to be this person's first gecko and she is so excited. :) She did her research and asked a lot of questions, I felt quite comfortable about sending the little one home with her and I know it'll be spoiled rotten! Again, an older photo but still a good representation:


Weighing my options for spring breeding! Leaning towards adding to Frank's harem at the moment, I really do love raising gargoyle babies. They're so chunky when they hatch and seem much less fragile than cresties. Heck, they weigh twice as much or more at hatch! I don't have any stripes in the mix so that cold be a fun addition. I'll keep you all in the loop.

Lavender Development

I apologize for the delay in posting, I've been ill. However, I did follow through and got some photos to show you how the hatchling lavenders show their color right after their first shed! Here is The Flash, all adorably curled and sleeping in some egg carton, less than 48 hours old:




See how the base color has already gone to a light greyish color with an almost purple tint? Just like mom and pop when they're unfired! Most hatchlings have a red base for at minimum a few weeks, but not these kids. I think it's pretty neat.

I also got a photo of some older kids, these are Liebchen's but also sired but Inigo. They were awake and climbing around, so I can't say these are their "sleepy" colors - they're definitely lavender fired down. Meet Surprising Lee (hatched 12-8-11) and Normal Lee (hatched 12-11-11 and the one on top):


You may have noticed that these older kids seem a lot creamier. Don't worry, Match and The Flash will follow suit! That's another change these particular lavenders go through really quickly - the orange color of their markings turns into lovely cream. Here's more proof for interest sake! This is Normal Lee hatching:


In other news, I sold my Nuu Ana leachie (Rhacodactylus leachianus), Gherkin, a few weekends back. I admit that it was a very difficult decision, but I decided that with my health problems I can not afford to keep around many animals as pets. Leachies are so notorious for compatability issues that buying him an appropriate mate had the potential of being difficult and much too expensive. He turned into a gorgeous animal and deserved to be bred. He is now in a wonderful home where I know he will not only be loved as a pet but they also plan to try and breed him in the future. So I'm going to stay focused on my two current species for now, though I'd really love to get into R. sarasinorum or E. agricolae. We'll see! I may just add to the red-base garg project, or get one or two nice crestie females for my groups.

In any case, I took some shots of Gherkin for his now-owner before she got him, and I would like to share them. I got Gherkin as a 6 gram unassuming-looking hatchling. But I saw potential! Here he is the day after he came home:


You won't believe how he developed. His pattern became absolutely beautiful, he got a ton of "snowflakes" (the light spots), and he is now well on his way to being a "New Caledonian Giant Gecko". Check it out (and yes that is my totally awesome fish/cat/dog-chewed-on Smokey the Bear ruler):


You read that right, 8 inches nose to tail, and he's not even straight! He weighs just under 60 grams. He's going to be a very impressive gecko when he completely fills out and reaches his full-grown size. Some more shots (I love the snowflake patch on his head!!):




Goodbye beautiful boy. I will certainly miss you. Enjoy your new home and be good for them!

Major Updates - Life and Geckos!

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted, but the months since then have been a whirlwind! I went and did the unthinkable, and got married. ;) My husband is in the Air Force and left for a 6 month deployment to Afghanistan the 8th of this month. Obviously we were not together long - only about a month total since our marriage on November 12th due to his training - so I miss him a lot. I decided to get off my butt and restart the blog to not only keep myself busy, but since I've actually got things happening now (gecko-wise) and other goings-on as well with the horses, etc.

Biggest news is... *drumroll please*... we've got hatchlings, folks! 8 of them, in fact. All are sired by Inigo and out of either Panic or Liebchen. Both moms have 4 each. :) And they're all outstanding - it's obvious literally after their first hatchling shed that they are going to be lavenders like their parents. They fire up a purplish color and fire down very light grey with creamy markings - just what I hoped for with this project! The first 4 hatchlings will be going to the person I received Panic and Liebchen from (when they're old enough and the weather is good), and I'm keeping the rest for a bit to see who I want to keep for myself.

I don't have the lightbox set up and I've been really bad about taking pictures (but I have a good excuse as you now know!) so don't have photos of the older hatchlings yet. I will try to get some soon. I do, however, have photos of the last two just after hatching - "Match" on the 16th and "The Flash" on the 18th. Though bear in mind that because these are "just hatched" photos so you don't get a true feeling for their coloration. If you've seen a lot of hatchlings you may notice that they don't have the quite the same reddish tint typical of crested hatchlings (it's more purple/dark), which I have learned is the first sign the baby will be lavender. And any reddish color at all is gone after the first shed. If I remember I'll try to get a picture of these two tomorrow to show you what I mean.

So, meet some Inigo x Panic kids, fresh from their eggs! First is Match:


And his clutchmate, who hatched tonight - The Flash:


The Flash... has a story. He hatched in a way I had never had one of my babies do before. I was feeding the geckos and almost done, so checked on the egg, expecting it to hatch anytime. No pip (hole), no nothin. Literally moments later I turn around and there is a fresh gooopy hatchling sitting in the incubator!! I realized he was the bumping around I'd heard behind me because he had left yolk splattered everywhere and dripping from the top of the incubator! Proof:


He even had almost completely buried his egg in perlite. My best guess? He pipped his egg and shot out of it immediately after... upwards! No reason for it, other than he's The Flash. And gosh he has some attitude, little bugger was gaping at me when I was getting off some perlite a few minutes later. Look at this sassy face, he knows he's hot stuff with all that cream!


I also got a pretty good shot of The Flash's egg teeth, so I thought I'd share for those who haven't seen or got a good look at them before. They use these specialized scales to slit their egg open, and then they are lost with the first shed. See the two little bumps at the end of his snout? Those are them! (And excuse his ridiculously goopy head, he hadn't had time to dry off at all after all The Mad Egg Escape.)


If you want to see any more photos of these kids I've got some more "just hatched" pictures on my iHerp account.

Nothing makes for a better first post of a new year than babies! I am very excited about them, all of the hatchlings from my lavender/cream project are turning out incredible. Obviously there was no success with the dalmations or gargs, but now I've just got more to try for this year! :) Before I talk your ear off, I'll end this post here. But I've got lots of things to post about soon... I've got more gecko news, interesting wildlife sitings, horse talk, lots of photos, etc. Stay tuned. ;)

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.

A Sad Tail

I apologize for not updating the blog in such a long time. Life for me has been changing, and to be honest, the geckos were the ones stagnating! The girls are not laying - I was getting quite frustrated.

I think a lot of the problem is a result of the conditions caused by the apartment I live in. It is an older building and lacks insulation along with having single pane windows. The gecko room's back wall has full southern exposure with no shade, and any day that it's sunny it heats that room up like an oven. That is not to mention the literally history-making heat wave we have been having for months now. It doesn't matter how low I put the AC (and I've closed all the vents except the one to that room), how many fans I have blowing with cold, wet towels and on bottles of ice.... keeping that room's temperature at a safe level has been a constant challenge and major stresser. What stresses me out the most is knowing that the geckos are experiencing a temperature swing every day, which is not good for them. It's not a huge difference, but enough to make me nervous.

With all that said, I don't find it too surprising that the girls are having a bizarre season (also that they're all virgin females and like I've said before, you can't predict them at all). In fact, a few nights ago Liebchen laid me a dud. One egg in the clutch, and infertile. What in the world!? And Perdi, Panic, and Pate (apparently I like P's) have not laid at all (besides the one egg I did get from Panic several months ago). The first set of eggs of Liebchen's were fertile but as I candled them along the way they were not developing normally and I was losing hope for them. Also a few days ago, one of those eggs went moldy. I candled the other and expect it to do the same. Thankfully the few remaining eggs look good.

So today I moved all the geckos to my parent's basement, to the closet of the bedroom I will soon be living in as well. It stays much much cooler there in the summer, and I'm able to control the temperature well with a space heater in the winter. Once everyone settles in I expect them to be better off and for behavior to normalize a bit. I may rebreed everyone, though I have to weigh that with how late in the season it is. It may work out for the best even, since in the winter it's actually warmer with the space heater in that closet than it is in the summer (and warmer temps are a cue for breeding/egg-laying behavior).

However, the sad part of this "tale", is a tail. Obviously all precautions were taken to minimize stress on the geckos during the move, but you can only do so much. Inigo was freaking out when I put him in a car and I actually expected his tail to be the one to pop off. Wesley also freaks out when traveling, and I've thought he was going to lose his a few times. However, tonight when I put everyone to bed I got a look at everyone but Perdi (she sleeps under her paper towels) and tails were all intact except one. I found that my crown jewel, my gorgeous, outstanding, perfect Pongo lost his tail in the move. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but it is to me. I've never had any of my geckos lose a tail in my care, though I do realize it was bound to happen sometime. Thing is - Pongo is a super dalmation, but a huge amount of spots were on his tail. He easily had well over a hundred spots on it alone. I'm just glad I have photos of him "before". *sigh* I'm sorry you were so stressed Pongo, I was doing this to try and make your life better.

So right now my life is being turned upside down, and I hope that something that stabilizes is the geckos. I know they will take some time to settle in (they took weeks when I first moved them to this apartment), but I have high hopes that their lives will improve dramatically with steady temperatures, etc.

And that is how things stand right now! Crazy, basically! The geckos have been moved, and next to go will be me and the cat. We're both suffering from the heat, since to keep the gecko room cool the rest of the apartment was getting no AC. I'm moving due to financial issues and also because of problems like I mentioned with the temperature (not to mention I cannot make it through another winter here - just to watch tv I was in layers, covered with a blanket, half in a down sleeping bag, and in front of a space heater). Wish us all luck, it's going to be an interesting next few weeks.