Dewshine's Clutch

Is due anytime now...


Dewshine as of last night:



And as of today, Easter morning:




Her back end can't get any bigger. She's so plump back there that her scales are being stretched apart. Hopefully she'll lay sometime this week.

Yeay and goodluck!

Yep......... any time now.......

Today makes day 26 post ovy shed. Still waiting...

She wants nothing at all to do with me and the camera. lol Can you tell?

She laid 6 eggs total. Her first year she gave me 5, then 4 last year. I'm glad to see the number has increased.

Yeay!

How can she keep them humid with no substrate?

DaganGecko wrote:

How can she keep them humid with no substrate?

She has substrate. She's just pushed all of it around so that none is touching her. She's created a mound of cypress high enough that I can't just look through the front of the bin and see her in the back. lol I may push some of it back towards her tonight, but for the moment, I'm leaving little Miss Attitude alone.

Well I mean I saw the substrate in there, I'm just confused how maternal incubation even works very well since it seems like it would be hard to regulate the tub, esp with the mother pushing stuff around : P

DaganGecko wrote:

Well I mean I saw the substrate in there, I'm just confused how maternal incubation even works very well since it seems like it would be hard to regulate the tub, esp with the mother pushing stuff around : P

She only pushed stuff around while she was "nesting" and when she was adjusting the eggs lower in her body. She looked like a contortionist then. Once she's finally settled and the eggs are out, she'll coil around them and stay put unless she gets thirsty or hungry. The girls keep humidity high around their eggs because they cover them entirely with their coils. The humidity is effectively trapped around the clutch. If she feels that humidity is still too low, she might go soak in water and then recoil them to add moisture to the nest. Alternatively, she may urinate in her nest to boost the humidity. The eggs, themselves, are respirating and create some humidity within mom's coils. It's more obvious closer to hatching because you'll see the eggs starting to sweat a little - at least, that's the best way I can describe it. You can sometimes find little droplets of water on them in the last couple of weeks before hatching. Hope that helped explain it a little better. If not, I'll try again.

Oh, very interesting. I like the idea of her soaking and returning to keep them damp.

From the last feeding. Just posting a new pic to help pass the time.

Nice rat face. Haha.

She doesn't want fresh killed right now so I have to offer her live. Poor rat didn't know what was happening. One second fine the next in snake jaws.

Checked in today (we're up to day 53, I think) and the eggs have begun sweating. Should see some pipping in the near future.

We're up to day 58 now and the eggs have been sweating a bit. Hoping to see what's in there in the near future.

She just won't let me candle her eggs, even after offering her a rat. lol So, in lieu of candling pics, here are more feeding pics. And a "Try it, I dare ya." pic. lol









One of the uppermost eggs has discolored a bit in the places that were already wrinkled. I think it's a result of getting dripped on and the water just lingered in the crevice. Other than that, it still looks fine and the last time I was able to candle it, I could see the baby moving in there. Just have to wait now to see what sort of baby will come out of there.

Day 59






I had a corn clutch that just started pipping earlier today so I thought maybe the ball clutch would be, too (since they were due around the same time). When I opened her tub, I saw a tiny head peeking out but as soon as I slid her out the head disappeared back into its egg. I'll check back in with her later to see if there are any better photo ops.

Just got back home for the night and checked in on her. Still just one pipped egg so far but at least I could see it's head this time. The rest of the clutch look like squished marshmallows. lol Wish they'd hurry up and join their sibling.

Looking like just one mojave in this clutch and it's male. I'll get some pics once all of them have hatched.

Okay, checked out the rest of the clutch and it looks like I got 1.0 mojaves and 2.2 normals. I hate that there was only one mojo in this clutch but I initially thought there was only one girl. Glad that's not the case. lol

They're all going through their first sheds now. The mojo shed today so I snapped a pic of him just a few minutes ago.

He's a gorgeous little Mojave