inadvertent premature cycling?!

[Evan Jamison]

So I was feeding last night, and decided to pull out a few girls and weigh them. I pulled one girl that is in the bottom tub of the rack right next to the window, and she is good to go for this season. She is a LTC and finally has put on enough weight for me to feel comfortable putting a male in with her this year. As I put her back into her tub I palpated her, more out of excitement for the breeding season starting than anything, and holy-moly! She's got five big follicles!!!! I mean bigger than marbles! That means they've been developing for a couple months at least. I knew that that corner of the room was the coolest, but I guess it's been cool enough for long enough. I put my male lemon in with her last night with no lock. I don't think he's into breeding mode yet, as I haven't officially started cycling. I'll probably run a couple different males through there in the next week or so to see if I can't get one of these guys to get the picture. I'm concerned that I missed the window for good fertility on these eggs, but we'll see in the coming months. This was just such a surprise for me! Oh well, guess I'd better check all the other girls in that rack too.....

-Evan

[kavmon]

whoo- hoo! get to work evan! get that girl a date. i'll probably do a little pairing next week. i just started cooling this past week. the temps here have been in the 70's and 80's still. cold front this week though!


vaughn

[Kilo]

Can someone please explain to me the process for checking for follicles???

[Sinsation]

How exciting. Wishing you tons of luck!

[Evan Jamison]

Can someone please explain to me the process for checking for follicles???

Palpating is merely pressing into the ventral side of the animal and feeling for bumps. I usually find it easiest to do this as the animal is crawling back into her tub. She will usually try to crawl to the back of the tub, and will do most of the work herself. All I do is hold her with my thumb on her belly and fingers on her dorsal side, and squeeze down after she about half of her body has passed my thumb as she continues to crawl through my hand. Follicles feel like hard bumps when they are small, much different than digesting food/fecal matter. Once you know what they feel like, you won't mistake them for anything else (especially when they are the size of gobstoppers ).

-Evan

[Evan Jamison]

whoo- hoo! get to work evan! get that girl a date. i'll probably do a little pairing next week. i just started cooling this past week. the temps here have been in the 70's and 80's still. cold front this week though!


vaughn

Yeah, we've had a cold front passing through the past couple days, so I'm hoping that will get one of these guys in the mood .

How exciting. Wishing you tons of luck!

Thanks Teresa!!

-Evan

[TheAudOne]

I'll never eat gobstoppers again!

[Evan Jamison]

I'll never eat gobstoppers again!

I'd take follicular gobstoppers over the sugary ones any day!

-Evan

[Adam_Wysocki]

Keep an eye on her, if you don't get a male to do the do soon, she could slug out on ya.

ROCK IT Brother!!

-adam