Beardiemamma   Randy Clark  

 #2026905

 Bella laid her first (and unexpected) cluth of eggs two nights ago!

Ok so this is going ot be a long post:

We rescued a 2 year old male bearded dragon (Goliath) and after caring for him for a year we decided to get him a girlfriend and give breeding a go, we did lots of research beforehand and purchased a 2 year old female (Bella). We introduced them and Goliath started bobbing right away and she was waving back so things were good. This was about 4 months ago. Bella is quite a bit smaller than Goliath and although he would catch her and bite her neck they didn’t look like they were lined up for proper action so we figured she was too small for him. We didn’t know she was pregnant because she was pretty chubby when we got her and then hibernated for a bout a month and must have gotten pregnant right afterward so what was a belly full of eggs we thought was just her going back to her normal weight, also she likes to sleep right on the glass at the bottom of the tank and is always digging holes so that didn’t seem out of the ordinary either! We did notice that Goliath had left a couple marks from biting her on her head and tail and we decided that mating had failed and we better separate them since the season is over and he was obviously fed up with her in his space, as soon as we put her back in her own fresh tank she dug a huge hole and squeezed out 13 eggs! Luckily since we had been planning on breeding we had all the necessary equipment to build an incubator and had that up and the eggs transferred into it within a few hours of them being laid, it’s just lucky we looked in on her before going to bed! Anyway our incubator is a big Rubbermaid tote with water and a fish tank heater, the eggs are buried 50 -70% in moist vermiculite and housed in a tupperware container keeping the temperature at a steady 84 degrees and the humidity about 90% We candled the eggs as we were transferring them careful not to turn them, one got dropped but isn’t showing any signs of damage yet (I know it is nearly impossible that this egg will survive but I had to give it a fighting chance, plus my boyfriend felt very guilty for dropping it and I don’t want to make him feel worse) While candling them at least ten of the 13 are obviously fertile, there were three that we couldn’t tell but they all looked pink and not yellow so we are hopeful. We have been feeding Bella lots of good food and calcium to get her strength back up and gave her a warm bath to be sure she had no eggs left inside, she didn’t but she did have a nice poop in the tub, almost on my boyfriends hand (haha). Anyway I just wanted to check in with some people who have more experience and get specific answers like what do I look for when checking the eggs to make sure they are alright, what are the signs an egg is doing poorly and when to remove a bad also what else can I do to make the new mamma more comfortable? Thanks everyone

 #2030629

 Bella laid her first (and unexpected) cluth of eggs two nights ago!