I've hatched a lot of sulcatas over the years, and a few other species too, but I've never seen this before. Goldy laid a large clutch of 35 eggs onMarch 6th of this year. I left the eggs in the ground and dug them up on March 21st. I let them sit at room temp (About 72-75F.) for a week and put them in the incubator on March 29th. Incubator is a large stand up freezer that has been gutted and I run it with two 78 watt radiant heat panels set on a Helix digital proportional thermostat set at 87 degrees. One panel on the ceiling and one on the floor. I have two low speed computer fans that circulate the air in there. The eggs are in shoe boxes that sit on shelves and there are three open tubs of water to help with humidity which stays around 80-90% depending on how much I open the door. I'll add a pic of the incubator later on.
So a couple of days ago, all of these eggs began hatching and one of Daisy's clutches are hatching too. So this makes 4 shoe boxes full of new babies all hatching at the same time. So this morning, I'm going through all the boxes of new hatchlings and removing all the ones that are out of their shells for a fins and a soak before being moved into their brooder boxes. I get most of them out and I see this guy. Looks like he's got something going on with his yolk sac…
What the heck is going on there…
Let's open up the egg and see… WHAT THE…..???!!!???!?!!?!?!?!!!!!
Let's rinse them off and have a better look:
Here they are in their brooder box:
Both babies are alive, active and alert. They are sharing about 10-15% of their yolk sac. My babies usually absorb their yolk sac within 24 hours of going into the brooder box, so I'm curious how this will play out. The one baby is right around normal size and all scutes are normal. His little Danny DeVito twin is about half of normal size and has some aberrant scutes. HA! I'm going to name them Arnold and Danny!!!
I will post updates over the next few days so we can all see what develops.
So a couple of days ago, all of these eggs began hatching and one of Daisy's clutches are hatching too. So this makes 4 shoe boxes full of new babies all hatching at the same time. So this morning, I'm going through all the boxes of new hatchlings and removing all the ones that are out of their shells for a fins and a soak before being moved into their brooder boxes. I get most of them out and I see this guy. Looks like he's got something going on with his yolk sac…
What the heck is going on there…
Let's open up the egg and see… WHAT THE…..???!!!???!?!!?!?!?!!!!!
Let's rinse them off and have a better look:
Here they are in their brooder box:
Both babies are alive, active and alert. They are sharing about 10-15% of their yolk sac. My babies usually absorb their yolk sac within 24 hours of going into the brooder box, so I'm curious how this will play out. The one baby is right around normal size and all scutes are normal. His little Danny DeVito twin is about half of normal size and has some aberrant scutes. HA! I'm going to name them Arnold and Danny!!!
I will post updates over the next few days so we can all see what develops.