I had a "first" yesterday. I've been working with a group of Geckonia chazalia (or Tarentola chazalia) for a couple of years now. These are currently the favorite terrestrial species I work with. Almost 3 years ago, I bought and raised up 3 CB hatchlings that all grew up to be females. I then spent most of a year looking unsuccessfully for a male or 2. Meanwhile the females started dropping eggs left and right... but still I had no male! Last spring I got a WC male that had recently been imported (along with 2 more females), and after quarantine he was placed with the females in mid-summer. I got a bunch of eggs but they were mostly infertile at first. By early fall I was getting eggs that looked fertile, but the male passed unexpectedly at that time. I had a number of eggs that progressed nicely and then went bad very late in the incubation. When I'd open them up, I'd find a nearly fully formed embryo.  I even had 1 hatchling emerge, but it was found dead. I got another dozen or so eggs in late November / early December (4 females) but wasn't sure if they'd still be good, as the male had been gone for a couple of months. About half of them candled pink, so I changed a few things in my incubation procedure and now, approximately 80 days later, I have my first successful hatchling of this species. Now the tricky part begins... there aren't many in the U.S. having success with this species. A few of the people who have hatched these guys out are reporting difficulty in keeping the hatchlings alive. We'll see how it goes... I still have several more eggs that I think are fertile.

BTW... I have picked up 2 new males since losing the last one, so come spring, I will be putting together 2 groups of 1.2 to see if I can produce some unrelated offspring and continue carrying this project forward. These can be prolific egg layers. If all the eggs laid last summer had been good and hatched, I would have had well over 25 babies! If I've solved the  incubation problems I was having, and if the babies survive and thrive, I should produce quite a few of these in 2009.

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