It’s been all quite on the update front as, well, there has not been much to report. Until now, that is! On Friday June 7, Gila 03 dropped one egg over the night and I came upon it at 6am when getting up for work. I candled the egg but did not see a blood ring (something that viable eggs have) but put the egg into an egg box just in case. For those that have not heard of this stuff yet, candling is using a flashlight to light up the egg to see what is going on inside. The blood ring is the blastoderm that will one day become a baby. No blood ring, no baby. Gila 03 did not drop her eggs in succession and the next one came Friday night around 10pm. This egg also did not look viable, but was more solid than the first. The third egg from 03 came Saturday afternoon and had a clear, but small (dime-sized) blood ring. I think 03 has more eggs in her, but she hasn’t dropped yet. Now when will little 05 drop her eggs….
That answer came Sunday morning when I got up around 7am and two eggs were in the nest box. Two, beautiful healthy eggs! Now, 05 is on the smaller side (757 grams pre-breeding season) so I did not expect many eggs from her but over the course of the next eight hours she would go on to lay a total of six viable eggs! Poor girl, she looks exhausted.
Now is the hardest part, incubation. I hope everything is set up right in the Grumbach S84 as I’ve had the humidity (90%RH) and temperature (79°F) dialed in for a month now. I opted to go for a lower temperature as outside temps have hit over 100°F in May so I expect the Summer to be pretty hot and I do not want the eggs exposed to high temperatures.
I’ll post some more thoughts and data that have been collected in the meanwhile, but fingers crossed the eggs make it to term and we have baby monsters in the Fall!
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