Uromastyx.org

Thanks Troy!


So, I guess Greg is being tight-lipped......

Hey everyone!

It's been a pretty busy few days with the move and hatching season in full swing. Here is a couple quick pictures of some of the little ornates poking out of their eggs. 9 of the 10 were good

Congratulations Greg! That is wonderful!

How many days did they incubate for?

What temperatures did you incubate at?

What was your water to perlite ratio in the incubation substrate?

Well finally got some time back on the internet...lol. Still getting the new place in order and should have all of our services up by end of the weekend.

Last season I incubated my ornates in their own incubator with a ranco thermostat. I set it to 93 for the 1st few weeks then moved it up a bit to 95. They hatched in 64 days. I originally placed the 2010 ornate eggs in my tortoise incubator which uses a cheaper reptile thermostat but has worked for years. I planned to switch the '10 ornate eggs to their own incubator but ended up leaving them in the one for the tortoise eggs. The incubation was 75 days, and temps fluctuated a bit day /night. Daytime highs were 92-93 and nightime lows were 87-89. This is a little higher than normal for my tortoise incubator but it yielded good success (so far) with my Russian torts (13/17 fertile, 57 days), greek torts (2/3 fertile, 67 days), and sulcatas (14/15 hatch, 87 days) from these warmer temps.

When i dug up the '10 ornate eggs I was not very confident, there were a total of 13 laid and 3 were very obviously infertile right away. I saved 10 of them and to my eye only about 1/2 of those looked good. I used a small Rubbermaid storage container with 12 needle-sized holes and a perlite-to-water ratio of 1:0.5 by weight. The eggs were buried 1/2 way into the perlite. I put those 10 eggs into the tortoise incubator and I left them completely alone for the next 45 days and didn't open their container even once. Last season I kept fooling with humidity and checking the eggs and I lost 2 fertile eggs late in development so I decided to stay hands off this season and see what happens. After about 45 days I decided to check and 9 of the 10 ornate eggs looked plump and white. A few began to sink in around day 55 and I added maybe 2 tablespoons of water to the perlite. Then at day 72 two of the eggs started sinking and I could see movement inside a bit. I thought warmer temps might help the babies to pip so I moved the egg container into one of the ornate uromastyx cages to get warmer, between 94-97. Once I did this the rest of the eggs quickly started collapsing. On day 74 the 1st two eggs that collapsed broke their heads out within 24 hours were out of the egg. The rest hatched within the next 36 hours and all looked perfect. I hope to have both of my adult females breed next year and will see if i can get similar results using similar methods.

Cheers!