Friday, July 3, 2009

And to us... children were born!

Thursday morning, as usual, I was running late... but nothing about this day would be normal...

Something told me to check on our dragons... as I check the food dish I noticed something rather strange... Kila was digging... like a dog burying a bone... and Kilo... laying behind her with a look of utter disgust... was beneath a pile of walnut shells... Kila had just nearly completely buried him in the substrate.

After having 3 sets of eggs laid this year, I knew what this meant... we have a pregnant dragon and ifI didn't think quickly I would have dehydrated baby dragon eggs when I got home!

I scooped up Kila, grabbed our prepared "Pregnant Dragon Container" and ran out the door...

Upon arriving at work, with my pregnant dragon in tow, I got a phone call from Donna (Ron's Reptiles; Chico, CA) telling me we have dragon's hatching! Wow, I could have a delivery and a birth all in one day!

Quickly, I asked to take the day off opting to work the holiday instead and ran out the door.

... Flashback... to last December...

Ben had created a great habitat for the dragon's simulating true Austrailian seasons in hope of brumating them as we were wrapping up construction of our new home. After 3 months, the testing grounds began... we reintroduced our dragons on "dates" and prayed our dragon's would be very "happy to see each other". We had no idea... just HOW happy they would be...

Since then, Corkscrew has laid a cluster of 14 eggs... Kila has laid 24 and then 4 more. This being thier first time and ours, only 4 of the eggs have made it through incubation. (Some eggs weren't fertile, others were too dehydrated). However, today... we would see new life!

... In just 20 minutes from the phone call yesterday telling me an arm was poking out of the egg... our first lizard was born. In hopes of viewing the rest of the births firsthand, I took my eggs home.
After many hours of monitoring their temperature to assure they had a cage at exactly 82 degrees... a second dragon began to emerge face first out of the egg...

Our second little guy took much longer than the first. He waited till quite late in the night to emerge and at that was quite timid but much more willing to be held. As you can see they are smaller than Ben's finger and quite willing to give him a hug!

Our first little guy is still skittish, but enjoys basking on the rock with his brother. He has eaten his first cricket today and has enjoyed running quickly here and there in the cage.

No comments:

Post a Comment