Treat day!

Feeding dog food as a staple is simple and affordable, but I love treat day. Snow was in the forecast for today, so yesterday I cleaned the garden of all it's small veggies and the skinks enjoyed a meal of zucchini, green bell peppers, and squash. They loved it! 

Did it actually snow? Yup. 

Brand new!

These are my favorite geckos, and they are notoriously difficult to breed in Canada. We actually don't know of anyone who has been successful in at least 10 years. We had to go to the US to get our breeding group because there were none to be found in Canada at all. Well, we hatched out 5 last year, and today the second baby of this season hatched. I have a new birthday buddy :-) From nose to tail tip he's a bit longer than my longest finger.

Do you have your licence?

In one week we are off to Winnipeg for the Manitoba Reptile Breeder's Expo and preparation begins today! As I was printing off our "Live Wildlife Import/Export Licence", I thought it might be a good time for a reminder. Fellow Saskatchewan reptile keepers, remember that you must obtain a free "Live Wildlife Import/Export Licence" any time you move, take, or bring an animal in or out of the Province of Saskatchewan. Absolutely every time. It is law (Captive Wildlife Regulations 13 (1)). We get an Export Licence from Saskatchewan Fish, Wildlife and Lands Branch for every single animal that we take to an out of Province Reptile Expo, and we get an Import Licence to bring any unsold animals back into Saskatchewan. As residents of Saskatchewan, we (each and every one of us) need an Import Licence for any animal that we bring in to Saskatchewan from out of the province. The form is easy to fill out, and it's free, you just need to apply 14 business days before the animal will be leaving, or coming into, Saskatchewan. 

We hope to see you at an Expo this fall!

A northern blue tongue has joined the skink family!

We excitedly welcomed our first northern blue tongue skink to our blue tongue family today! Jaxom is originally from Mel's Exotics, was born in 2014, and is amazingly docile. 

Baby merauke update!

Baby blue tongue update! The babies will be 4 weeks old on Tuesday and are doing fantastic. We lost 2 along the journey, and have 7 remaining. One will be staying here (although we haven't decided which one) and the others will be sold at the Regina Reptile Expo on September 22/23 and at the Edmonton Reptile Expo on October 13/14. 

Enjoy a peek at their photo shoot from this afternoon.

Surprise!

This week held three little surprises for us. 3 years ago we started the search for Blaesodactylus Boivini (giant Madagascar velvet geckos). There were none to be found in Canada, top Canadian breeders and importers said they had not seen any for 5-7 years and to their knowledge none had ever been captive bred and born here. We were intrigued by these guys and sought out 5 from the US, legally importing them and adding them to our family. After months of eggs with no babies, we gave up and began enjoying them simply as interesting pets. Over the past few months the 2 youngest died, leaving us with 3 older pet B. Boivini. 

Fast forward to this past week ... on Sunday, July 15 a daughter noticed a baby in the cage! Wednesday there was another! Then another on Thursday! What a crazy and unexpected week, 3 babies from pet geckos that we had no intention of breeding. We did nothing with the eggs and they hatched in the adult tank. These are the first known Canadian captive bred, captive born B. Boivini in a decade, and likely even longer! 

Babies!

We did it! 9 baby merauke blue tongue skinks have dropped and we are thrilled! We have been working with these guys for 4 years now and are very excited to finally have produced captive bred, captive born meraukes!

There are many people that have been waiting years for us to produce, so for now these will only be available in person at the Regina Reptile Show on September 22/23 and at the Edmonton Reptile Expo on October 13/14.

Our second IJ came home yesterday! Hopefully it's the girl we are wanting, so we can pair her with our IJ boy. After 3 seasons of unsuccessful merauke mating, we are hoping for IJ success. Still waiting to see how 2018 merauke locks turn out, some girls are looking good ...

She's on paper towel just until we see her first poop and are sure that she is healthy, coco husk after that :-). Outdoor photo is from the previous owner.

She spend a good part of her first afternoon here just enjoying a good basking spot.

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.