surprise baby!

[mlededee]

so a little background on the story:
a while back i was cleaning the cage that i was keeping 3 female cresties in. all were in the 30-35 gram range and nearing a year old. i found 4 or 5 eggs in their potted plant--no big deal--the girls were reaching maturity and sometimes they will lay a clutch when this happens. most of the eggs were pretty shriveled and dented but 2 of them looked ok, so i popped them in the incubator just basically for the heck of it--no real reason really. i knew they were all infertile. i'm not even sure exactly when this was--i didn't document it like i usually do because i knew they were basically blanks. i just marked the two eggs with 0's.

sooo, today i walk past the incubator and there is a baby! i thought--whoa, my next babies aren't due for another 2 weeks or more! upon inspection i saw that it was one of the infertile 0 eggs that had hatched! whaaaaaat?!?

now, 2 of those girls i raised from about 4 week old babies and they had never seen a male. the 3rd girl, merri, i bought back in may from a girl that said she had never been bred. she was a bit too small for breeding anyhow when i got her, so i put her in with the other 2 girls after quarantine and she hadn't seen a male either. well, apparently she HAD seen a male before i got her. i went back and looked up the ad on fauna that was placed about her back in may. the girl was selling her as part of a pair (a pair that had never been bred) but i talked her into selling me just the female. anyhow, she must have been with that male at some point and was retaining sperm for a while before she finally decided to lay these eggs. she didn't lay again until i put her in with a male over a month ago and those 2 eggs were infertile (very infertile--caved in, molded, etc.). so, i figured that was normal for a first clutch after being introduced to a male and i definitely didn't think that she had laid any fertile clutches before!

anyhow, enough blabbering. the moral of the story is, don't throw out your crested eggs no matter how infertile you believe them to be! you never know!

merri, the unexpected mom:



the unexpected baby:

[ladywhipple02]

Awwww! You're so lucky... he's such a cutie! I LOVE these little guys!

[kavmon]

cool surprise! nice baby!!! good point, i never throw out any eggs until they mold up completely or turn into raisins.


vaughn

[frankykeno]

Well you have just got to call that baby "Lucky", since it's very lucky you didn't toss it's egg in the garbage!

What a cutie and the mom is a sweetie too. Congrats Emily!


~~Joanna~~

[wendyhoo9]

Congrats! Great suprise, and a lesson well learned for the rest of us new crestie breeders! My two are still incubating and have a bit to go...Quick question, how do you keep the water ratio right when the eggs grow and increase the weight in the container? The Repashy book I have suggests two parts perlite to one part water by weight, but the little buggers are growing and now weigh more than they did origionally. I've been kinda eyeballing it to what I did the first few weeks.... (sorry for the thread hijack! AWESOME BABY!)

[mlededee]

thanks all, and thanks to jo for the official naming of baby lucky.

wendy, i honestly have no method at all for adding water back to the incubator. i think these little eggs are waaaay tougher than we think they are. i do not add water often at all--as long as there is a little bit of condensation in spots along the inside of the incubator (rubbermaid shoebox) i think it is moist enough.

[frankykeno]

Awww I'm honored. Hope lil Lucky does very well for you. They must be the cutest things as they surely are in their pics.

Best of luck with all of them Emily!


~~Jo~~