Husbandry – Goatsby's Place

2025.08.24 update: Gila monster eggs incubating and the preparations for next season

August 24, 2025 by goatsby, posted in Breeding, Gila monster, Heloderma, Husbandry, reptiles

Gila monster breeding is not a black and white endeavor.

As with every Gila monster captive breeding season, there are wins and loses, new things learned and insights gleaned to improve next year.

Is that a xenomorph in deep space laying its deadly eggs? No it’s just our banded Gila monster Lucy resting between laying much less dangerous eggs. No facehuggers here thankfully.

First the wins; I had an improved nesting experience (thanks to my mentor Dr. Mark Seward) with my stalwart females Belle and Heather who had their best year yet. The newbie females are still figuring it out and they laid partial clutches which are good, but held eggs that were ultimately unviable. Also, we had a disproportionate ratio of males to females so had to do some calculated male swapping so that likely factored into things. The females are also recovering nicely post breeding which bodes well for next year. I currently have ten good eggs in the trusty Grumbach S84 incubator which is great. There was a total of 22 eggs, 10 of which were infertile slugs or laid late, 2 fertile eggs went bad about a month after being laid, and 10 still a-cookin’. I always feel that if I have one egg hatch in a season it’s a win!

The losses are always rough, especially when you lose a Gila and this year we lost a female that became egg bound. It is tough and in retrospect I should have intervened sooner, but assumed that since she was eating and defecating the eggs would have eventually passed on their own. Sadly, this was not the case. It seems the time between oviposition and expiration is much shorter than anticipated and generally experienced with other reptiles. Now I know not to wait and to intervene sooner, but I am deeply saddened that this information came at the cost of a beautiful Gila monster.

Another battle that is ongoing is with our axanthic Gila monster Winnie that has refused to eat after laying five infertile eggs. She has been to the vet and is on antibiotics, but she is still not eating voluntarily. Not a good sign but she is eating eggs with a little help from me and I am hoping she recovers. As it’s late in the season and she should be bulking up not fighting for her life, Winnie will be taking the next year to recover as long as she pulls through. She was sick when she arrived in 2021 and after treatment then she has had been doing well until now. There’s obviously an underlying issue that we will get to the bottom of over the next year to ensure she gets healthy and stays healthy for the rest of her days. Stayed tuned for updates on this front…

Last year’s holdback continues to blow me away as she grows with a deepening orange and dark black coloration.

So, it’s been another year of learning, living and loving our precious Gila monsters. Keeping detailed notes is helping to make changes in the future which will lead to greater success and hopefully no more losses. I can’t wait to see what pips out of the egg this year, it truly makes all the struggles and planning worth it when the babies come out!

PS – My 10-year-old daughter is creating videos for Goatsby’s Place, so they’ll be some fun shorts on YouTube coming up soon!

2024 Gila monster Spring kick-off!

March 21, 2024March 21, 2024 by goatsby, posted in Breeding, Gila monster, Husbandry

While all was quiet on the blog and social media posts, we have been working diligently behind the scenes with our monsters, and are kicking off our 2024 Gila monster breeding season!

Misty, a high-orange female Gila monster produced here in 2019, will be bred with an unrelated bloodlines this year.

While every year is certainly exciting, 2024 is off the charts for us here at Goatsby’s Place! Besides the fact that our Seward-line axanthic female will be breeding for the first time, we also have two of our own Gilas also breeding for the first time! We will have a total of four females breeding this year, and four males to mate them with (a 1:1 ratio, which is preferred).

Winifred is our Seward-line axanthic female Gila monster.

As the season starts anew, it’s a time to reflect on past year’s successes and failures. I re-read my notes and chat with other breeders and try to see how we can do things better. This year’s focus will again be nesting in hopes of having more viable eggs laid on time. I’ve come up with a new nesting strategies and will be sure to share that here once we have it worked out. We’d also like to get more proficient with the ultrasound and be able to time ovulation and oviposition with greater accuracy this year.

We monitor growing follicles and testes on our Gila monster by ultrasound. This helps us to keep an eye on reproductive development and when the highest chance of successful pairings are.

Male testes also change throughout the year and need to be monitored.

Besides having the fortune to live with Gila monsters, its both profound and humbling to enter each year with these amazing reptiles and learn more about them. Having produced Gilas each year just feeds my love for them, and I’m sure this year will be no exception!

Stay tuned for some exciting things happening at Goatsby’s Place this year, new videos, lots of photos, and of course more Gila monsters! If you’re interested in getting on our rapidly growing waitlist please email us today. And if you have any questions or there is something you’d like to see on an upcoming video please let us know. Thanks for stoping by!

New video! Gila monsters hatching!

November 5, 2022 by goatsby, posted in Gila monster, Heloderma, Husbandry

It is absolutely the most exciting time of year here are Goatsby’s Place – baby hatching! After years of preparation and trying to get everything right, getting any Gila monsters to go full term is always an achievement. This year we had 15 eggs, and only four hatched so it was pretty rough but the four we hatched are exceptional! The Gila gods must have felt bad for me as they were nice enough to give me a dark-phase baby with no banding, a very rare morph indeed! Of course this little baby is staying with us to see how it turns out. We will be posting the photos of the babies soon, though we quickly sold out with the few we did produce so be sure to get on next year’s waiting list if you are interested in one of our monsters!

2022 Gila monster season: Engage!

February 16, 2022February 19, 2022 by goatsby, posted in Breeding, Gila monster, Heloderma, Husbandry, reptiles

Winnie the monochromatic (axanthic) Gila monster wasn’t quite ready for the 2022 breeding season despite being six years old but we look forward to her joining the group in 2023.

Our 2022 Gila monster breeding season is about to kick into high gear. Our group (or lounge of Gilas as it’s known) of adults will be coming out of brumation soon and the captive breeding season begins. But all’s not been quite as our monsters sleep here at Goatsby’s Place, quite to the contrary as we’ve worked hard to prepare for this season and improve on what we’ve learned over the past year’s successes and failures.

Our 2020 holdbacks aren’t ready to breed so do not get brumated during the winter until they are a few years old.

Our primary goal this year (other than to have fun and raise amazing baby Gila monsters!) to increase our hatch rate to 80% or better. Over the past few seasons are hatch rate has been 50% or less which is disappointing to say the least but I have some ideas as to why our success has been limited. This year will be the first time we can test these theories and prove them out. Last year‘s phorid fly attack and the fact that only one male was cooled certainly contributed to the lack of success. This year on the other hand we have equal ratio adult pairs and are working with our own ultrasound to closely follow the inner workings of the male and female reproductive systems.

Ultrasounding a very patient Gila monster. Photo by J. Brueggen

On a technological front we are migrating to a fully web-based system to monitor and adjust things as the season progresses. We’ve purchased and implemented the über-cool Spyder Robotics Herpstat SpyderWeb proportional thermostats to control the heat, and importantly, set up a nighttime temperature drop for the Gilas. We continue to use the SensorPush system to monitor ambient temperature and relative humidity, and added night vision cameras to monitor copulation and activity between paired Gilas. Having all this work with Alexa is just a geeky bonus, but fun nonetheless.

Herpstat 2 SpyderWeb proportional thermostat is a web-based unit that can be checked and adjusted from anywhere!

And last but certainly not least, keep an eye out on our YouTube channel as we begin a series of videos documenting the full reproductive season of our Gila monsters, from pairing, to copulation, to egg-laying and incubation, and if all goes well, hatching. My goal is to produce informative and fun videos to help increase our understanding of the amazing Gila monster. The good news is you get to see lots of beautiful Gila monsters, the bad news is you’ll get to see my ugly face from time to time:)

PIT tagging Gila monsters

October 23, 2021October 24, 2021 by goatsby, posted in Gila monster, Heloderma, Husbandry, PIT tagging, reptiles

PIT (passive integrated transponder) microchip tags are certainly not new to the pet industry, being used extensively on cats and dogs to help lost animals find their way home. Taking this application a step further, some reptile owners PIT tag their herps to help keep track of animals in their collection or to identify those produced by a certain breeder. Until recently I haven’t given much thought to putting these microchips into my Gilas but a recent incident convinced me otherwise.

Someone on an Internet forum claimed to be selling one of my Gilas, but they didn’t have the “Certificate of Captive Birth“ that I provide with each Gila born here, and the person selling the animal was not registered on my list. I take this very seriously as there are folks selling wild-caught animals as captive-bred using well known breeders names and credentials. After a short investigation, it was found that the Gila was not one of mine but someone was using my name to sell a Gila of unknown origin (I cannot say for sure if it was wild-caught, but the circumstances around this sale were very suspicious). To help verify my Gilas in the future, I decided to look into PIT tagging my lizards.

After doing some research and speaking with my friend John who is very knowledgeable in both Gilas and PIT tags, it seemed this would be a good way to go in ensuring my Gilas could be easily identified within my group and to those that purchase from me.

Overall, the procedure is simple and can be done at home with the help of an experienced vet tech or if you are lucky enough to have a good friend knowledgeable in such things (thanks John!), otherwise inquire with your herp vet about the procedure. The health and safety of the animal is always paramount so please don’t take shortcuts on this or any matter concerning your Gilas. I was able to do this at home because I had an experienced friend but would not hesitate to take my Gila monsters to the vet to get the PIT tag installed safely.