"kisses", eggs and questions...

Where to start! :O

I'll begin with Nolan, one of my patternless females. For about 6 weeks, I have not witnessed Nolan eating. Of course that doesn't mean she's not eating since I usually leave mealworms or supers in a dish overnight. Well I noticed about two weeks ago that she was getting visually thinner and losing color. Around this same time, my other female Lily got knocked up.

I had decided to separate Nolan from Lily. Now I can monitor exactly what's going into her. I tried feeding her mealworms, superworms, roaches and pinkys. She wouldn't take anything. I thought she was just being stubborn. Her last shed was when I separated her, two weeks ago. She is drinking water, the only thing I see when she defecates is urate.

So, I need to get her to poo so I can get a fecal done. Tuesday I started giving Nolan CGD through a syringe. I read that it was an acceptable form of diet for force-feeding a leopard gecko. Note that I'm "force-feeding" Nolan to acquire a fecal. Here are before/after pics. There's about a 6-week span between pics so I hope you can understand my concern, even though she's not quite on deaths doorstep.

Before, patternless on the right...
http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal...r/img_0019.jpg

This morning...
http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal...r/img_0154.jpg


Now on to the "kiss". Apparently, Nolan doesn't like being man-handled :P
http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal...r/img_0153.jpg


So Lily, the normal pictured above, she layed her eggs yesterday.
http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal.../img_01521.jpg

They didn't look good to me. I don't know if it was the lay box medium or what. They were very pliable, they didn't resemble anything like what I have seen in any videos online.

Even after a night in the incubator, they were still the same, squishy & dented. My reptibator is set to 82 F and it was at 83% humidity this morning. They also had no smell this morning.

Can these be characteristics of bad eggs?

Also, I have read online that some breeders re-introduce their female to the male a couple days after laying eggs. Anyone here actually do that?

Thanks for looking at my long winded post :eyepoppin

Maybe not death's doorstep, but if my leo's tail shrunk that much that quickly, I'd be concerned too. Sounds like you're basically doing the right thing - CGD may not be optimal (or even particularly digestible for an insectivore), but at least it'll get something moving through so that you can get a fecal done, which hopefully will provide some answers as to what's going on. I'd also get fecals done on any other geckos that were housed with the sick one, just so you know where you stand - it's always easier to deal with health problems if they're caught early.

Very true, she was housed with my breeder female that layed earlier in the week and she has been with the breeder male. So I'll get Nolan done and prepare to have the others done if those results come back poor.

Thanks for the advice.

Any advice on putting my female breeder with the male again?


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I don't have a whole lot of experience with breeding, but my feeling is that it'd be best to wait on pairing animals up until you're 100% sure that they're all healthy. That way you minimize the risk of anything spreading any farther than it already may have. Say the second female caught whatever it is that your sick one has - you wouldn't want to spread it to the male as well if he's clean. Better to have to wait longer for eggs than to potentially lose animals.

That's true and I wouldn't have done such a thing but I didn't notice she was sick till after copulation occurred.

Nolan is in quarantine now and doing pretty well. I'm thinking that aster Lily went gravid, she became less tolerant of a tank mate. Nolan was only staying on the cool end for the last week or so in the tank with Lily. Now she's usually on the warm side under the hide and comes out at night which I think is a good sign even though she's still not eating mealworms.


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Just an update....

Nolan is doing good, slowly gaining weight.

Lily laid another clutch of eggs this morning. They look MUCH better than the last clutch. Her first clutch went very moldy and became almost rock hard, as well as the bedding around it.

This second clutch looks way better.

http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal.../img_02041.jpg
http://tech-tiles.com/wp-content/gal.../img_02051.jpg

Any tips for getting the sharpie line on the egg? I tried to clean off an area of the egg, but the sharpie would never make the mark. Also, I used the cypress mulch instead of the ecc-earth since the eggs came out completely brown from the lay box. This time around I'm using SuperHatch.

From what I read, I should candle them in 2-4 weeks. I'll update pics when I get them candled.