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.