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.

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.

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!

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.

Blue tongue skinks!

We are excited to let you know that although we didn't update this website much in 2015, things were still happening at The Crested Castle!

We had a great year with our crested geckos, producing some absolutely gorgeous babies. We will continue with some of our previous pairs and are switching things up with some new comers to our crested family. Our 2016 breeding pairs will be updated in a post within the next few weeks.

The biggest news is that we have spent 2015 working on expanding our blue tongue skink family. They are an incredible reptile that we adore and we have decided to begin the adventure of breeding them! We especially like the merauke blue tongues and will be working with this species. Merauke's are notoriously hard to breed and birth in captivity, with only a handful (or less) being both bred and born in Canada. We are up to the challenge.



So far we have one confirmed male (Meatlug, in the photo above), one suspected male (Stormy, on the right) and a highly suspected female (Sasha, photo below). We are currently teaming up with Mel's Exotics in Winnipeg to determine if a merauke in Winnipeg is indeed a female, as advertised. If Mel determines that Charlie is a female (or even if she can't confirm any gender), then Charlie will be coming here to round out our blue tongue family at 4 beautiful meraukes.

We have witnessed some interest between Meatlug and Sasha this week, but no full mating yet at this point. If all goes as hoped, we could be announcing blue tongue babies in early summer. It's our dream, but we also know that it could take a few years to get all the breeding kinks workout out with this species. We will definitely keep this page updated with our merauke breeding adventure!