Smilobar
Member
Hello all,
My poor special little girl is a topic again. She had some weird beard swelling previously but she got over that pretty quick. We also found out around then that she was a girl! We had thought she was a male for a long time since she was a rescue.
OKAY sorry back to the main topic- she recently laid 30 infertile eggs, at 8 years old! She didn't want to lay them all at once unfortunately. She never showed any digging signs except ONCE. And that's when I gave her a large laybox tub (with a heat lamp and light over her for accurate temps). I tried every variation too- put her in it at night, in the morning only, in different rooms, different substrates, different lighting! But she never dug and just did not care. Then she started laying eggs 2-3 at a time, everywhere and anywhere. She didn't care about where, and I honestly think she just thought it was poop! She just would not dig anywhere or even try to look for a place to lay. I literally tried everything. Each egg came out fine with no issues though, and she was still eating regularly. Everything was normal, just popping out eggs along with tiny poops. She just looked at me like "What? I dunno what those things are, but they're not staying in my belly no more!" :roll:
She laid her last egg on last week. Then this past Monday (June 10th), she started to dig again. So we put her back in the tub, and she spent the whole day digging a hole. We checked on her every half hour. At hour 5, she was turned around with her butt in the hole, eyes shut. We came back half an hour later, and she had filled the hole and was ready to come out. We dug to see if she laid more eggs, but she didn't. She just dug a hole all day and filled it back in!
She was extremely tired the day after she dug all day, which makes sense. But now it's a few days later, and she's digging like CRAZY! I put a smaller laybox in her enclosure so she can dig and get out when she wants to. I initially thought egg-binding, but she's eating regularly, has a lot of energy, and is very alert. She had not lost any weight during that whole egg laying time, but now she has lost a lot. She's lost fat in her tail and fat pads, and she is very skinny, like when we first rescued her. Here's a few weeks ago when we tried to get her to lay her eggs:
And this is her now, sorry, it's hard to tell but she's definitely skinny (I'll try to get a better picture when she stops digging -_-) :
I've been feeding her as much as she'll eat of Repashy's Grub Pie and Veggie Burger (which are AMAZING if you haven't tried them yourself, I cannot recommend them enough) though she's always had a hard time swallowing, so I have to be careful not to overfeed her so she doesn't choke. I went and got her some wax worms to eat too. I had been adding more calcium to her diet to help with the egg production when she was laying. And she's still pooping normal healthy poops, albeit smaller than normal size.
Could she be laying another clutch? She's not large like she's filled with eggs at all. I'm concerned because she has lost so much weight right after all those eggs, but confused because she shows no signs of illness at all. Has anyone every experienced this? She's an older gal that was raised in awful conditions before I got her, so I don't know what to expect!
Thanks in advance everyone! I've been scouring the forums constantly for advice, but I hadn't seen this issue pop up before. I appreciate the time reading this long post!
My poor special little girl is a topic again. She had some weird beard swelling previously but she got over that pretty quick. We also found out around then that she was a girl! We had thought she was a male for a long time since she was a rescue.
OKAY sorry back to the main topic- she recently laid 30 infertile eggs, at 8 years old! She didn't want to lay them all at once unfortunately. She never showed any digging signs except ONCE. And that's when I gave her a large laybox tub (with a heat lamp and light over her for accurate temps). I tried every variation too- put her in it at night, in the morning only, in different rooms, different substrates, different lighting! But she never dug and just did not care. Then she started laying eggs 2-3 at a time, everywhere and anywhere. She didn't care about where, and I honestly think she just thought it was poop! She just would not dig anywhere or even try to look for a place to lay. I literally tried everything. Each egg came out fine with no issues though, and she was still eating regularly. Everything was normal, just popping out eggs along with tiny poops. She just looked at me like "What? I dunno what those things are, but they're not staying in my belly no more!" :roll:
She laid her last egg on last week. Then this past Monday (June 10th), she started to dig again. So we put her back in the tub, and she spent the whole day digging a hole. We checked on her every half hour. At hour 5, she was turned around with her butt in the hole, eyes shut. We came back half an hour later, and she had filled the hole and was ready to come out. We dug to see if she laid more eggs, but she didn't. She just dug a hole all day and filled it back in!
She was extremely tired the day after she dug all day, which makes sense. But now it's a few days later, and she's digging like CRAZY! I put a smaller laybox in her enclosure so she can dig and get out when she wants to. I initially thought egg-binding, but she's eating regularly, has a lot of energy, and is very alert. She had not lost any weight during that whole egg laying time, but now she has lost a lot. She's lost fat in her tail and fat pads, and she is very skinny, like when we first rescued her. Here's a few weeks ago when we tried to get her to lay her eggs:
And this is her now, sorry, it's hard to tell but she's definitely skinny (I'll try to get a better picture when she stops digging -_-) :
I've been feeding her as much as she'll eat of Repashy's Grub Pie and Veggie Burger (which are AMAZING if you haven't tried them yourself, I cannot recommend them enough) though she's always had a hard time swallowing, so I have to be careful not to overfeed her so she doesn't choke. I went and got her some wax worms to eat too. I had been adding more calcium to her diet to help with the egg production when she was laying. And she's still pooping normal healthy poops, albeit smaller than normal size.
Could she be laying another clutch? She's not large like she's filled with eggs at all. I'm concerned because she has lost so much weight right after all those eggs, but confused because she shows no signs of illness at all. Has anyone every experienced this? She's an older gal that was raised in awful conditions before I got her, so I don't know what to expect!
Thanks in advance everyone! I've been scouring the forums constantly for advice, but I hadn't seen this issue pop up before. I appreciate the time reading this long post!