how often can they lay eggs

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cljack

New member
About a month ago my Noxema layed about 16 eggs, now just yesterday she laid 12 more. Is this something I am going to have to be dealing with every month??? I had room in the incubater for this clutch of eggs but given the gestation period at this rate I will not have room and I do not want her having eggs every month as it is I was not expecting the 1st clutch of eggs. I have searched around but can not seem to find a answer to this question.
 

gwoody

Member
Well... our girl has laid eggs about every month since September. BUT... only the first clutch had viable eggs. I can't get anyone to answer if this is normal.
 

Dave94

Gray-bearded Member
they can multi-clutch, some have gave people 5clutches of eggs, though 3-4 is most common.
 

cljack

New member
Original Poster
Nice, I think I may just seperate them, Those babies just eat way too many crickets!!! I do not see myself going to the pet store everyday for crickets. Poor girl as soon as I put her back in her cage after she laid her eggs he was already doing the head bobbing. :(
Thanks
 

peera

Sub-Adult Member
That's one of the primary reasons to never keep males and females together. He will literally keep mating with her until she dies, because she can't get away from him. She can keep laying eggs even when they're seperated, but they'll be duds after the next few clutches if you don't put them back together. The next few clutches she has, if you don't have the room, put them in the freezer to kill them if they're fertile.
 

gregcranston

Hatchling Member
peera":37f39 said:
She can keep laying eggs even when they're seperated, but they'll be duds after the next few clutches if you don't put them back together. The next few clutches she has, if you don't have the room, put them in the freezer to kill them if they're fertile.
Yeah they can lay 2-4 clutches from one sucessful mating, as they can store the sperm, so even if seperate them, she may lay another few fertile clutches, but yes if you keep them seperated after that she won't lay any eggs, and if she does they will be infertile. Try to make room for them in the incubator, but if not, there is always the freezer option.
I know I'm just basically repeating what Peera said above, I just wanted to re-iterate it.
 

gwoody

Member
Re: how often can they lay eggs
by cljack on Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:26 am
hey you may already know this but if not......... You can get thousand lot boxes of crickets in varying sizes a lot cheaper then buying them individually. Just check around the local pet stores, ( not the big chains) and see who sells the big boxes. Or if someone will order you a box a week or what ever. Some of them want money ahead for obvious reasons, but most around here anyway just let you know what day of the week they get them and you show up and buy um.. Its cheaper. At ten cents a piece , a thousand is 100.00 bucks. That will definatily break you fast! we pay- depending on which store we go to between 22.00 and 32.50 a thousand lot. Ordering online was like 16.00 bucks.... last year. I haven't ordered them in the cold at all, but had no problems in the summer. I think they charge a little more for a heat pack to go w/ them in the winter.
Our 14 hungry, hungry babies go through a thousand a week pretty much. They're still picky about the veggies. But somewhat like the 'juvenile beardy pellets ' you soak in water.
I'd have a tough time killing any viable eggs. But I certainly think we're glad the rest were not viable! ,,,$24.00 a week on crickets plus all the other stuff is still plenty of money. If we have future batches it won't seem quite so painful i guess since we won't have the outlay for all the equiptment extra tanks and light set ups and furnishings Etc...And unless they have colors etc.. you just don't get a whole lot a return on your money!
 
Our Ahtena layed her 1st clutch a couple weeks ago and now she's starting her digging routine again which tells me that she's going to lay another. Our herp vet told us that we can have her spayed so that she won't have any more eggs. We are considering this as her being pregnant just seems to wear her out. You may want to consider this option for your Noxema as I know that it can be nerve racking with all the worry. Just make sure you take her to a good registered reptile vet. Dog & cat doctors won't help. Good luck.
 

gwoody

Member
it seems like getting her spayed is pretty pricy? But once she gets past the 3 to 6 layings, shouldn't she be done? I also see how it wears My female down some (Tang) But then again You can really see the cycle after the first couple times. The obvious digging , but also the day or two just befor laying=== not hungry. Typically she's ravenous, even before her first mating experience. What I do to make sure she's ok is really pump up her food w/ healthy stuff, and that includes pinkies. Which both Beardies take readily. Now I find this somewhat unpleasant i admit. it doesn't bother a lot of people tho. Any case she'll happily eat several of the tiny pinkies in a feeding or one or two a day of slightly larger. I don't feed them daily indefinitely, just a couple times a week w/ their other food. The pet store and some breeders say a full grown Beardy should be able to eat large fuzzies even hoppers. or the large rat pink's. I personally don't wish to take a chance on anything that can bite them . Have had a very bad experience w/ that in another pet before. And I know Someone w/ a large Beardy who can feed the large rat pinks. Mine just don't seem to like them so big. I stick w/ the smalls. But this and proper vitamins and veggies and of course her coveted crickets and way less superworms then she would like! will keep her Ok. Of course constant breeding is a whole different thing. They just breed them to death practically. But in this situation if you only have to wait for her to use up her ''' stores''' then I can't see going to expense of the surgey, or taking the chance that she would be one of the small percentage who have a complication in surgery. Mine do their mating dances regularly from across the table from their separate cages. At first i thought well its maybe cruel to keep them where they can see each other and be trying to do mating rituals constantly. Still do wonder sometimes. But when I tried to move them where they couldn't see each other anymore, they were very upset, both quit eating and were being very depressed acting. for two weeks or more, so I removed the barrier, eating and acting normal resumed immediatly! So they get to see each other in their respective cages now. And dance all they like from across the room. They seem happier now. In any case definitely be sure if you choose the spaying route that you do get a well known area reptile vet. Local breeders can usually give you an idea as to a good vet they use. I'm not sure if spaying the female would necessarily stop the male from damaging behaviours or not? I would check into that before I spayed her so they could be together .
 
Thanks for your reply gwoody. Athena has an appointment with her vet next Tuesday. I will discuss in depth about getting her spayed and get her opinions on the procedures & risks involved before anything is done. Itr would be a different story if Athena had eggs only after mating but when females can produce eggs on their own without mating...well it seems like it can be too much on them. Since laying eggs, Athena has seem to have lost her "pep". She's just not the same spunky beardie she used to be.

As far as keeping her fed, before her 1st clutch of eggs she wasn't eating at all.
I put her on a hand fed liquid diet. I mixed her greens with calcium and vitamins with some pedialite and fed her with a dropper. After a couple of swallows she became aware of it and started taking more of it on her own. At least she was still getting her nutrients from the greens as well as her vitamins. Plus the pedialite helped in keeping her hydrated. Warm baths helped to, it helped lighten the load she was carrying so we did that nightly. She really enjoyed being in the water.

Digging....she was digging in her sand only to reach the bottom of her tank. Her eggs were getting big in her belly but she wasn't finding a suitable place to lay.
This went on for a week and a half. One night I came home and saw that she had been digging all day...she looked so exhausted and still had not layed. I emptied her tank completely and replaced it with moist sand. I built the sand up on one side to the top of the tank and dug out a little spot and stuck her in it. She got the message right away, dug completely to the back of the mound and layed 21 eggs the next afternoon. After laying, I gave her a bath and she slept and slept. She woke the next day and ate like a horse and then slept some more. Now she is digging again and I have put together a seperate lay tank so hopefully she'll lay quickly. I can't really feel any solid eggs in her tummy yet but I do feel some slight lumps, like the eggs are forming.

I'll let you know what our reptile vet says about the spaying and what not.
Again, thanks for the reply. Robert
 

gwoody

Member
"Well it does sound like she's having a tougher time then Tang. Sounds like you did a good job taking care of her too. My vet has given me liquid Vit. b to help make ,,well ,,any of my critters hungry from time to time and helps with energy.
But Tang also did refuse to eat for a period of time just before laying. i think they're just so 'full up' they don't have room to eat. My Green Iguana momma was same way , but like yours after words was time to chow down! Maybe getting the sand or space to bury her eggs worked out a piece of the problem. It may have really stressed her holding on to find a spot. Tang didn't seem satisfied w/ her regular arrangement either. So I put a tub w/ a soft moist substrate in for her, next morning she had dug all the sub.. out of the tub, and put it all under the tub and laid her eggs 'under the tub' !
Case in point======My Iguana was the victim of a first time pregnant iguana owner (Me) And a really really bad /liar of a vet. I had ,had several iguana's before her but all males. This vet ( probably 20 years ago) "said" he was a reptile vet., More scarce then they are now. I kept taking her in to see why her belly was so swelled up and she had suddenly started digging in the kitty litter box! And was not eating well. (She had free run of house.) And was usually a huge 'pigatha' about eating everything in sight,, her food, our food, cat food any food!! LOL .. He assured me 'it' was a male definitely not a female so it couldn't be that she was acting pregnant. He sent me home w/ numerous treatment plans. Saying that she just must be impacted so i should soak her in hot water and apply a little pressure while rubbing her belly. I did the warm water soak but just felt the pressure rub was wrong for what ever reason and didn't do it! One morning I found a very odd shrively ping pong ball sized item on the living room carpet. Realizing i was right to begin with! ...#@&#**! I Took her to another vet immediately, where she proceeded to get an emergency hysterectomy because she'd been trying so hard to push she had ripped her uterine walls etc... She had dropped several no good eggs around the house, the vet removed 33 more! Now that's a reason not to eat!! LOL. Anyway the 'actual' reptile vet said " that not feeling she could find a safe/proper place to lay likely contributed to the issue- she needed the eggs out! So a couple thousand dollars later (on the payment plan) she was fine. The how she got pregnant is another story! She lived to be a bit over 17 years old. Anyway Do tell what the vet says. I hope tang won't just make eggs indefinitely, I'd only heard it was for several times after mating provided no more mating was aloud. back to the books!! G.
 
A good herp vet is hard to find. There are only 2 that I know of here in Las Vegas. One has a 2 week waiting list and the other (ours) is available anytime we need her, during biz hours of course. We trust her as she does have reptiles at home.
Anyhow...good news. I set up Athena's lay box last night and she laid her eggs this morning around 11:00 am. I was suprised to say the least! Her 2nd clutch was like the first, 21 eggs only 8 of them were collapsed. She ate like a piggy after her nap. She's doing fine. I now realize how important it is to have a suitable place for them to lay. I'm going to keep an eye on her, keep her lay box in tact and see if she's gonna have any more. 3 weeks is enough time to tell.
I'm having 2nd thoughts on having her spayed but still plan to keep her appt with the vet on Tues. I figure a check-up couldn't hurt.
Oh another thing I wanted to ask you Woody. Our male, Apollo sheds skin on a regular basis put I have never seen Athena shed. You think that her growing has stopped due to the pregnancy? She's only about 15 inches long and has been that length for quite some time. In the 4 months that we've had her, I've never seen her shed her skin. I'll also ask the vet about this as well.
 
The vet estimates her age to be about 9 months old. She was about 8 months when she laid her first eggs. Her weight as of yesturday was 245 grams. When carrying eggs she was 272 grams. She is small for her age and the vet and I both believe that she may have been the runt of her litter. She a sweetie though.
 

peera

Sub-Adult Member
Yikes, that is much to young and small to be laying. :/ Poor girl, I hope she makes a full recovery without to much difficulty.
 
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