Bent tails

[jamesj]

Hey guys,

I've been breeding rankins/lawsons dragons for the first time year, the first clutch all hatched with no problems. However her second clutch has hatched this week with 4 out of 10 having bent tails. I know this can be caused by incubation temp changes but do you know of anything else that could cause this? I currently run my incubators on mat stats but have got some pulse stats to start using from now on to try and keep them more stable.

I know it doesnt affect their quality of life but I dont want it to keep happening.

 

[lizardgrrl]

While I have no experience with Rankins, a Vitticeps born with a bent tale may be suffering a birth defect from either something the mother ingested or inbreeding, have MBD straight out of the egg as the mother received insufficient calcium, or in my Tweezie's case, she is actually one dragon that started as twins, but the second never developed outside the body of the first. Her story and pictures are here, viewtopic.php?f=44&t=91536&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a The tail has a spot that looks like someone carved out a bit, and replaced it with a smaller bit from a different dragon. In most cases, the defect indicates a problem of some degree, and I sure other here can give you more specifics.

 

[midnight_962002]

yeah. It can usually be the sign of a calcium issue. One of my dragons went off of food while she was gravid, the entire time. I was giving her liquid calcium but, she would spit it out. A couple of the 30 plus babies had a little kink in the tale. But, they were all ok and growing like weeds.

Ernie

 

[jamesj]

Thanks for the replies, Ive spoke to a couple of breeders over in the UK about it (and theres not many of them over here!) and they all said either incubation temperature problems or possible diet.

My females get dusted and gutloaded food and have a bowl of pure calcium which they do lick from, but I was told to try leaving grated cuttlefish bone in with them to give them even more calcium so will see what happens next year.