Uromastyx.org

I am curious what others have found as far as brumation is concerned. Has anyone had consistent success breeding any species of Uros without brumating them? If so, have you done any type of cycling?

Last year, when our Saharans laid eggs unexpectantly, we did not make any changes in order to brumate them. Their MVB is on for about 10 hrs a day and another heat lamp comes on for about 4 hours a day.

Now, their enclosure is next to a window, so I suspect just the change in daylight hours coming thru it might have been enough to stimulate them into brumate naturally. I did notice that while they did not stop feeding altogether, they did not eat as much.

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Now this past season, we did make small efforts to simulate a brumation. Over a period of several weeks, I systematically reduced the photoperiod to 8 hrs a day. Because this is only the 2nd season we've had these animals, I don't know how much a difference it actually made (i.e. if we hadn't reduced the photoperiod, would they still have bred as the year before?).

Thanks Michael. I find that very interesting. We have often wondered about whether brumation is really necessary, or if the natural change in season would be enough. Where we live has definite seasonal changes. I know our Mali male certain changes his behavior in the winter. He sleeps longer and is up much less time during the day. We do not change his cage set-up or environment at all. He clues in to other changes around him. I wonder if mating would be the same way. I hope to find out over the next few years.

Yeah, regrettably, our jobs require us to be gone 8-10 a day thru most of the week, so I miss a lot of our Uros daily behavior. The only definitive occurance is the missing vegetables from their food dish at the end of the day. Occasionally, on my day off, I'll sit in there and watch them for a while, but overall, I don't see what time they usually start getting active.

One little fluke happened during our Disney vacation in January. My sister-in-law was feeding them for us, and the night we arrived at our destination, she called to say the MVB ws smoking. At a loss of what else to do without my presence, I instructed her to just turn the bulb off completely until we came home. So there was about a week they went with only 5 hrs of heat a day (from the 2nd light we have). I wonder if this affected anything (possibly why the female has yet to drop her eggs).

While I have not yet done any breeding, I have heard from various sources that it depends on the type of uro. If only I had some level of experience to back that up....

I have spoken with several people that have breed Uromastyx with out any cooling period, but I went ahead and did a light cool on mine last year.

2009 / 2010 Brumation schedule;

December 6th 2009; Stop feeding all who are going to brumate this year. Vacuumed all seeds and extra food in the enclosures of those to going to brumate this year to make sure that absolutely no food or seed is left in enclosures of those going to brumate this year.

** Need to give them a couple weeks to pass the food in there stomachs, prior to turning out the lights

December 19th 2009; Turned off basking and florescent UVB lighting on those to going to brumate this year.

January 9th 2010; Reset Lights, Start Feeding and resumed normal feeding and light schedule

I did offer 4 hours of basking lights and florescent lights every Saturday or Sunday but no food was offered for the whole period.

So far in 2010 I have witnessed two separate pair of my Saharans breeding and one of my Rainbow benti breeding. I have not witnessed my Philbyi breeding yet but I suspect they may be breeding when I am out of the room.

I think most of us trying to breed Uromastyx on a large scale are doing a light cooling in hopes of stimulating a bigger percentage of the Uromastyx to breed. I feel that some of my Uromastyx most likely would breed even if I do not cool them it is just that I might get a little better result by cooling them.

Troy

What are your temps when you brumate?


It seems like a good percentage of reptiles have a better fertility rate when they are at least cooled down or brumated before breeding season.

Room temperature maybe 70 degrees during the day and as low as 65 degrees at night.