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!