Sweet holdback!

We don't hold back many geckos, but this guy captured my heart soon after hatching. Ash weighs about 17 grams, is the offspring of 2 olive coloured parents (Oliver and Olivia) and sports a gazillion beautiful spots. We are pretty proud of this boy we produced. He is not for sale :-)

Hatchling alert!

We did it! Our first stinkpot hatched in the night and we are thrilled. We had aimed our incubation temperature (27-29c) for 65-70 days incubation and hit that right in the middle with 68 days incubation. Enjoy the photos and videos of this super cute little one.

Stinkpot baby number 2 arrived in late morning. We are waiting on the last egg in this clutch to start cracking.

WCRE, here we come!

We are excited to say that plans are confirmed and we will be visiting the WCRE this weekend in Red Deer AB. We have been thinking of vending there in 2018 and want to make sure that there is a place for us, that we wouldn't just be bringing tons more of what is already there. Of course we also want to shop :-). 

Let us know if you will be there early on Sunday, we would love to keep an eye out for you and say hi.

2 weeks?

We could be seeing baby turtles in as little as 2 weeks and that's cause for some huge excitement around here! We love our turtles and breeding something new excites us. This us our first time though and we still might be 4 weeks away, the first hatch of a species is always a guess as breeder temperatures and humidity determine incubation time.

Eggs 1, 2, 3, and 4 are still quite likely infertile, but we won't toss them until eggs 5, 6, and 7 have hatched and we know for sure that they have passed any possible hatch date. 

We have noticed big changes in 5, 6, and 7 lately, the clearer parts of the shells are dark where you can see the turtles and the calcium bands have have expanded making almost the whole egg chalky white. We are getting close!

Eggs 8-13 have beautiful calcium bands and are developing nicely, these ones are due to hatch about 3 weeks after 5, 6, and 7. Yay! 

We will definitely be keeping you updated!

Crazy day!

We are home 90% of the time, but of course crazy things happen on a rare day we are away. We came home Wednesday evening to 5 more turtle eggs, 4 are definitely fertile, bringing us to 7 fertile eggs and 5 unknowns! Yay! We can't wait for baby turtles to start hatching.

There were also 4 Crestie eggs waiting for us, 2 are definitely fertile. 

The last surprise was that we had a Crestie baby waiting for us. This is our 6th year breeding and this little one is our first deformity. "He" is a cutie! I love the dorsal pattern and can't wait to see what happens with it, we definitely have not hatched anyone with this solid of a dorsal before. You can see his left hind leg is twisted, it's like his knee joint is backwards. He's a bit clumsy and slow, but he can get around and climb just fine. The next couple of weeks will tell us if there are any internal issues too. 

What about the turtles?

We have had some fun things happening around here in 2017! A couple of weeks ago we posted about our blue tongue skinks that finally had their first successful matings earlier in the year and we are still hopeful that those girls are pregnant.

Today I want to update you on our common musk turtle breeding program. We have been working with these 6 (1 male, 5 females) turtles for 2 breeding seasons now and are thrilled to announce that we have eggs!

The first three eggs were laid 59 days ago, on May 17. At our incubation temperatures we could see little turtle hatchlings as early as this next week! The eggs were improperly calcified causing the shell to be of varying thicknesses so it was impossible to know if the dark "calcium ring" appeared on these first three eggs. We aren't sure if these first eggs are fertile, but we always incubate if there is any chance of fertility. If the eggs are fertile they will have a dark white spot in the middle. You can easily see this spot on eggs 5, 6, and 7!

Eggs 4 - 7 were just laid on July 8. 3 are definitely fertile and if our incubation process is effective, we should see hatchlings in mid September.

I thought this might be a great time to also show you our home made egg incubator. 

It has been running for 2 months now and it's working perfectly. 

We used a mid sized plastic bin with sealing lid, a small plastic bin with a lid, aquatic pond soil (our substrate), 2 bricks, a fully submersible (and temperature adjustable) aquarium heater, sturdy mesh, substrate thermometer, and our trusty temperature gun.

First, we prepped the smaller tub, adding moistened aquatic pond soil, the sturdy mesh, and the eggs. 

Then the bricks and heater go in the bottom of the bigger tub. We filled the water right to the top of the bricks and placed the smaller tub on top of the bricks. 

The smaller tub now gets placed on top of the bricks. Pop in the substrate thermometer and we were ready to start closing it up.

The lid for the smaller tub is placed on top at an angle, balancing on the sturdy mesh
This is to keep humidity near the eggs, but to prevent water from dripping directly onto them.

Close the outer bin's lid tight... 

Check the temperature... 

Double check the temperature with a temp gun and the incubator is good to go.

Babies? Maybe?

Merauke blue tongue skinks are notoriously hard to breed in captivity (intentionally and repeatedly), producing live babies. In Canada it doesn't happen very often and for the past couple of years we have been determined to figure it out, dedicated to increasing our merauke family, trying new things and to keeping good records. 

We have 3 females that mated successfully from January - March 2017. On May 19 we took photos of each of them, today we took 6 week follow up photos and things are looking promising! 

Zoe looks the most likely to be pregnant, she mated with Angel only once, 104 days ago.

Buffy first mated with Angel 170 days ago and last mated 106 days ago. She is recovering from a burn when she broke her heat lamp in May, so the red you see on her back is from the iodine ointment. We see some signs that keep us hopeful that she is pregnant.

Charlie first mated with Angel 171 days ago and last mated 104 days ago. 

Blue tongue skinks are great at showing signs they are pregnant and not producing anything (they simply had a huge spring appetite), or producing unfertilized eggs. So, although we are hopeful, we won't know anything for sure until those babies start popping, which will likely be in July. We will keep you updated!

Basking in the sun.

I love the toasty warm, sunshiny days when I can take the B. Boivinis outside. It's fun to watch them all line up on the sunniest wall to bask, and follow the sun around throughout the day. Our large front deck has full access to the eastern morning sun and the full southern sun of all afternoon. It is wonderful!

Do you want to see our gecko room?

We promised you walkthroughs of our reptile spaces and we are keeping that promise :-). This first one is of our gecko room. The blue tongue skink room, the Boivini habitats, and the stink pot turtle aquariums will be coming over the next few weeks. Enjoy the quick glimpse into a bit of what we do :-)

A new addition!

First, we want to say thank you to everyone who came out to Edmonton's Reptile Expo three weeks ago! It was one of our best yet, we met some fantastic people, got to see some old friends, talked about reptiles for 2 whole days, and made some great sales! Thank you!

We have been pretty busy since coming home and I will try to update you little by little :-)

9 days ago we welcomed Matrix into our blue tongue skink family. He is our first IJ, all the others are Meraukes, and we adore him. He is almost 3 years old, is captive born and bred (from a breeder that we know personally) and is quite the charmer. We are excited to expand into the IJ (Irian Jaya) species of blue tongue. After 2 preventative mite treatments, 9 days on paper towel and a 40 gram weight gain (530-570), we moved him onto our regular coco husk substrate. He is still in the quarantine tub for a few more weeks, but will soon move into his permanent home. 




IJs come from Indonesia, just like our Meraukes, and have the same care requirements. We have heard from numerous keepers and breeders that IJs tend to have the laid back, chill, friendly attitude of a Northern from Australia and the social inquisitiveness of the Merauke and we have certainly seen this to be true with Matrix. While none of our Meraukes are aggressive, they do huff when you reach into their home or bother them, but they love to watch us (from the safety of their tank) when we are within eyesight. This guy definitely likes to keep an eye on what is going on, he is always out basking and hardly makes a noise when we go into his home. 








We have also heard that breeding IJs is much easier to figure out than Meraukes. We will continue with our dream to crack the code on successful, repeated Merauke breeding in captivity in Canada, until then we are excited to possibly delve into this new world of IJs. 

Welcome home, Matrix!

3 days to go!

As promised, here are the updated photos of the juveniles that will be coming with us to the Edmonton Reptile Expo this weekend. They all weigh 5 grams - 11.5 grams and are in great health.

We are also bringing a 25 gram sub adult, Halo. When using a loupe we see pores, but there is no male bulge yet. Sex is not guaranteed for Halo. 

Lily (a proven female breeder) will also be coming. She is a spotless red and throws red and spotted red babies.

Iced Capp will be coming to the show as well. He is a proven breeder male who throws flames and harlequins.

These photos and descriptions are simply to get you excited about the show. We live too far from a major center to ship and only sell at Edmonton AB (possible Regina SK) expos at this time.

5 days until the Expo!

We have 5 days until our first Expo of 2017! Today we are weighing geckos, deciding who will come with us, and taking photos of those who are ready for new homes. Are you ready to see some? 

** I apologize for the poor quality of these photos, it's much easier to post right from my phone, but it looks like the photo quality suffers :-( . I still have more juveniles to take photos of and I will take the time to upload them onto the computer first. If time allows, I will redo these 8 before the show. **

These are our Tiana and Titan babies who are ready to go home. All are over 5 grams and unsexed.



Lily and James babies that are all over 5 grams, unsexed and ready to go.



These 2 were purchased from Live Harmless Reptiles in BC, but have not grown into what we were hoping for. They are unsexed.

We do not ship our reptiles, are currently only selling them at Expos we attend and due to issues in the past, we no longer take deposits or hold an animal for pick up. These photos are to show you who we are bringing and to get you excited to come.

Only 6 days to go!

In 6 days you will find us hanging out at Edmonton's Reptile Expo! Until then this place will be humming with preparations as each family member pitches in to get things done. This is our 10 year old drilling holes in the grow out habitats we sell. 

See you at the Expo!

Trying something new

We just received this new to us crested gecko food in the mail and will be trying each of the flavors out with our crew over the next few weeks. We don't like serving our crested geckos just one brand of food, Clark's is only one flavor and they weren't eating it anymore and our crew won't touch any Repashy, so here we are. Apparently phelsuma and skinks love it too, so we will be giving some to our blue tongue skinks and the Boivini (their care is very phelsuma like). We have heard good things about it and will keep you updated. 

Right now we have 1, 2oz bag of each flavor and 1, 8oz bag of each flavor that will be for sale at the Edmonton Expo. Prices are yet to be determined, but we will post that before the Expo.

6 1/2 weeks until the Edmonton Expo! The countdown is on. In 2-3 weeks we will be weighing our babies to determine who is coming and will take quick snapshots to let you know who will be available. 

We don't take deposits on any of our reptiles, nor do we "hold" any for pick up at the Expo. We like you to come to our table, see our reptiles in person, look around the show to see what else is available and then choose. These little guys can change in the month between photos and the Expo, lighting can be deceiving, as can filters and individual computer monitor settings. It's also hard to picture their size without seeing them in person. We want you to be completely happy with your new reptile and that's best achieved with an in person decision. 

Hope to see you at the Expo!

More blue tongue news!

Angel has been doing a great job visiting with the girls this season. Today he confirmed that Zoe is a girl, bringing our count to 2 males, 4 females, and 2 unknown. Over the past 6 weeks Angel has mated with Charlie 5 times, Buffy 3 times, and now Zoe once. We will be pairing him with Sasha this next week. Yay! Hoping for babies in the spring.

Spring ERAS expo!

Our tables are booked! This will be our 4th Edmonton expo, we are excited to see old friends and make new ones. Maybe we will see you there

The blue tongue skinks are mating!

We have been waiting quite awhile for a male to figure this out. Meatlug had been our only confirmed male and we relied on him to be the backbone of our breeding program. He tried to mate with our possible females (none are confirmed), but never got close to a lock. He passed away Dec. 24, 2016 and we didn't know where we were going from there with 7 adults all of unconfirmed sex. 

Last week Angel surprised us with multiple sperm plugs, we wasted no time pairing him and he wasted no time locking up with both Charlie (in the top photo) and with Buffy! We were hopeful that these 2 were females through behaviour testing with Meatlug and with a male at Mel's Exotics and now are sure. 

We are excited to see this breeding plan move forward! We will keep you posted on progress and possible pregnancies.

Blaesodactylus Boivini!

This is a super exciting milestone! We did a lot of inquiring of the top reptile breeders and importers in Canada when trying to find some B. Boivini to purchase. Over a number of months they all agreed that there were none to be had in Canada. We also repeatedly heard that while some breeders kept them 5-7 years ago, no one knew of any successfully breeding them. 

We were determined to try, imported 1.4 from the US in spring 2016 and here we are... 2 eggs! They have been laid in a hide with a narrow opening and are hard to get at, so we will leave them alone and attempt to hatch them in the terrarium with their parents. While these geckos don't parent their young (hatchlings are completely self sufficient), they do not eat them either, so babies will be completely safe with the parents. These aren't a commonly bred gecko in North America, so information can be hard to find, but we are likely looking at a 4-6 month incubation period for the eggs ... it's going to be a long wait :-).

We currently keep our breeding trio of 1.2 together in a large 23"x23"x48" high screen terrarium, and our 2 sub adult females in an 18"x30"x30" high screen terrarium. These guys come from a semi arid, forested part of Madagascar and reside away from the tropical areas, so we have elected to keep them in a drier and more airy enclosure than our crested geckos. They seem to be thriving. Our 2 sub adults are sporting some really big calcium sacs and will be ready to breed whenever we decide to put the male in with them. 

So, they have bred, now to successfully incubate and hatch these geckos and join a very exclusive club of B. Boivini breeders in Canada! Woohoo!

Saying good-bye to Meatug :-(

It's taken me a bit of time to come to terms with this loss and actually believe that it happened, so sorry for the delay in letting you know. 

Sometime on Chrismas Eve morning Meatlug passed away. There were no signs of illness and we have no idea how old he was. He came to us with a history of poor husbandry and we are just glad we could give him 2 good years. He was our second blue tongue skink, a gentle guy who loved spending time outside his tank. We are going to miss him so much!

Meatlug was our only confirmed adult male, a key part of our breeding endeavors here and the guy we paired with each BTS to see what we could glean from behaviour sexing. So, we are feeling quite a bit of a gap in our blue tongue skink breeding program right now and will be taking a few steps backwards as we pair them up without having confirmation of sex.