Well I've been joking about this all last year and here it is

Well those who know me know that all last year I was joking about it being 'just my luck' that with all the eggs from  the chameleons, all the poison dart frog spawn and all the corn snake eggs they would all hatch or morph out at the same time..... well lo and behold! everything has happened in the last three weeks and to be honest although I'm absolutely thrilled at the success of it all HOLY CRAPBUCKETS!!! these little buggers are eating like pigs.
We are currently up to 31 baby chameleons (with lots more due any day) who are currently labelled Clutch 1 and clutch 2. Clutch 1 hatched about 10 days ago and were very big babies, they had incubated longer than most at nearly 10 months due to the incubator being off slightly and incubating them at the lowest tolerance level for the eggs. They had a couple of feeds of fruit flies but were big enough to take size 2 crickets on the third day. They are currently getting a box of size 2 crickets everyday dusted with pure calcium powder and are being sprayed for 2 five minute periods with nice warm dechlorinated water.Clutch 1 consisted of 14 nice big healthy chams.

Clutch 2 hatched out only a few days ago and are quiet possibly the smallest chameleons you'll ever see, they unlike Clutch 1 only incubated for around 6 months as their incubator was a smidge high temperature wise but we have had 16 healthy albeit small chameleons who are now in a vivarium and eating fruit flies readily only a few more days and I can move them onto Crickets.

Here's the first and again the smallest of the clutch:

That's a five pence piece!
There were 16 chameleons in this clutch and the rest were bigger (although not much)
I managed to get a quick vid of one of the chameleons from clutch 1 eating:

As well as the chameleons starting to hatch (finally) another clutch of corn snake eggs hatched and we had another 8 snake babies (smaller clutch due to the female double clutching). These again are carolina and anery corns and again have very nice markings the little buggers are a bit bitey and cute and as a bonus they are all eating already here's two from a previous clutch:

Anery:

Carolina:

These little guys and girls are fairly easy in comparison to the chameleons and only eat once a week and only poop once a week.... corn snake babies are dead simple! that's why I'm glad my adult pair produce every so often, they are great fun and I do enjoy the whole experience.
Quiet Possibly the best news yet though and again for those who know me know how much time, effort, money, blood, sweat, tears, tantrums this has taken......We are finally having success with the dart frogs an I don't just mean 1 or 2 babies I mean we now have lots.
The Ole maries have produced 9 healthy frog lets who are eating like pigs and growing like weeds:

And on top of that the Hyloxalus have done well too giving us a good batch of 10:

And the Anthonyi are doing well also:

Also the Mysteriosus tadpoles given to me by a friend has popped 2 out of 3 so far =)

SMILEY FACE!!

God my food bill is getting bigger and bigger LOVE IT!!

Baby Chameleons!!!!

Well it's been nearly a year but the day finally arrived for the chameleon eggs to hatch. After a little concern I realised that the incubator I have been using has incubated these eggs at the very bottom of their tolerance range. This has prolonged the incubation time quiet a bit but at last they are out!.
In amongst all the confusion and excitement of setting up a vivarium for the babies and getting through days at work to rush home and see how many more we had, I completely forgot to take any pictures of them actually hatching ..... bugger. Not all a total loss though as I have 1 egg still in the incubator and if I should catch it hatching I'll take a couple of non invasive shots i.e. through the box as I don't want to disturb the baby while hatching.
Here is a picture of the first one out when I moved him into the vivarium, he's still covered in the vermiculite they are incubated on.

I'm going to start the babies off on fruit flies for a few days and then move them up to small crickets. They get sprayed 2 or 3 times a day with warm de-chlorinated water for drinking and humidity and have UVB light and plenty of heat.

Its late now I haven't the energy to explain why there haven't any post until this one or why it so short but I promise I'll catch up later in the week as I'm on holiday... but for now sleeping babies!!!!!!

Tad development

I've managed to spend a day at home today and have have realized that we have a fair bit going on at the moment. The corn snakes have all hatched and we have 19 of them, yes 19 out of 18 eggs (still smiling about that). The corns have laid again and we have a further 10 eggs in the incubator. The tadpoles are starting to come through thick and fast and we currently have 2 tinctorius powder blues with all four legs due out of the water any day now, an Ole marie tad just popping his front legs now,8 other Ole marie tads in various stages of development  around 12 Leucomelas tadpoles again in varying stages of development  some azureiventris eggs about to hatch and around 9-10 of them looking really good so far and 3 Mysteriosus tadpoles that were given to us by a friend. as well as all this we are STILL waiting on the chameleon eggs to start hatching (any day now).

Anyway as most of you know I have been battling with tadpoles developing SLS for a long time. SLS is a malformation while metamorphosis occurs. Frogs that develop seemingly normally and have fully formed hind legs and a well formed body can eventually morph with very thin malformed front legs or no fronts legs at all.

There are no definite theories on what can cause SLS and no concrete cure. People I have spoken to about the issue have said that amongst other things SLS can occur when:

• Tadpoles or parent frogs are not exposed to sufficient UVB light
• The tadpoles are raised in water of an inappropriate temperature
• Genetic defects caused by bad parent blood lines or by inbreeding
• The water being used is of the wrong pH value
• The tadpoles are fed an inappropriate diet
• Supplementation of the parent frog 

The list goes on and on. Here are a few pictures of past cases we have had of frogs with SLS:

This is a pair of auratus. 

This is a Tinc. Cobalt that was doing very well as a tadpole and the muck in his rearing container impaired the view of his legs and this was the result

Here is another cobalt tadpole that was found to have SLS when his front legs popped

All of the frogs/tadpoles were euthanised by a trained Vet in the kindest possible way.

In the past I used boiled, cooled tap water to raise my tadpoles and found that depending on species tadpoles would either die very early on from a mouth fungus or would develop nicely until the point of front legs. After much experimentation and talks with other breeders I started trying different types of water. Bottled water was working well I didn't loose any tadpoles to mouth fungus but lost many to SLS. Then someone suggested rain water collected locally. Well since using rainwater collected in a tank outside my back door I am pleased to report that things are getting much better I have only lost dubious looking probably infertile eggs. The numbers produced are a little lower but again I am always changing how things are done. The parent frogs now get a good varied diet and I dust every feeding with Repashy ICB calcium supplement. The tadpoles are kept at room temperature in plastic pots with nothing but rain water and a dry oak leaf for cover. They are fed a mixture of fish food, spirulina flake and dried bloodworm every other day. All of this has finally paid off if you remember with the very first D. Leucomelas that we had morph without SLS (he's still doing great by the way), and now I'm pleased as punch to show you the following pictures, these are the two D. Tinc. Powder Blue tadpoles we have that have come furthest along thus far and should hopefully be taking their first steps onto dry land soon:

I'll update you later when they are out and about =)

As promised some funky baby shots

Here is a shot of how the Orange Terribs look now:

By the time they have their adult colouration they should be a brilliant orange colour, cant wait to see them all big and satsuma like.

And here is the first (really bad) picture of a powder blue tadpole without SLS!!!! chuffed to friggin bits is not the actual words I used but you get the idea how hard this has all been for me.

 I also thought you'd like to see some of the corn snakes that have hatched over the last 24 hours:

Anery number 1

 Anery number 2

 Anery number 3

 Carolina number 1

 Carolina number 2

 Carolina number 3

All of these pictures have been taken within 24 hours of hatching so the colours are not as good as they will be yet. We have to wait for the first shed to really see it come through and that should be within a week to 10 days.
We had a very interesting thing happen too.... twins, below is a picture of them snuggled in the egg just after they pipped for the first time:

the really cool thing is that as far as I can make out they are two different colours. The nose on the left looks to be a Carolina and the nose on the right looks like an Anery. Cant wait to see the result.

Small update after a long wait

First off let me apologize for not posting anything for so long. My workload has increased and my free time is being swallowed rather quickly. First things first 'Skully' our Leuc baby is doing really well, he's getting bigger by the day and eating like a little piggy. As he seems to have been my first major success I decided to celebrate the occasion with a tattoo:

Also in the last few weeks I have obtained four Phyllobates Terribilis Orange, these were a bargain and have been on my wish list for a long time. They were only just ready for sale when I got them and they are yet to obtain their adult colouration. I'll post a picture of them as they are now later on and then hopefully an update on how they look when they have coloured up.

As far as the eggs go we've not seen any real action from the chameleon eggs yet but I'm pleased to tell you we currently have corn snakes hatching as I type.

Here they are pipping and the first few having a look at the world and taking their first breaths:

Cute huh?

Well on to some other frog stuff, as I went into the rep room to get pictures of the snakes hatching I heard a familiar sound I've not heard in a long time.... The male Cobalt was calling from his hiding spot. I managed to get a video but their call isn't very loud at all so you may need to turn your speakers up:

We are also getting very excited about our tadpoles now as we seem *fingers tightly crossed* to be having more success than ever before. We have some Tinctorius powder blues that are due to pop their front legs any day and they are looking really strong, we're not loosing tadpoles to mouth fungus or water quality issues  now and the frogs, especially the Leuc's are still productive. We have a shelf full of tadpole tubs now and hopefully I'll have some great news soon.

Here's hoping the next update has lots of pictures of babies!!!!

Here's 'Skully'

Well the Leucomelas tadpole from the previous post has morphed successfully and been with us for around 3 weeks now. He is quite happy in his growing out tub and has been greedily munching his way through everything we throw at him. We have decided to call him Skully, his patterning shows you why:

I'm very happy with his progress and we have a large number of tadpoles on the way to morphing and more eggs to hatch yet. Here he is the day we moved him into his grow out tub:

The grow out tubs used are about the same size as a standard shoe box and has two mesh covered vents glued into the lid. I use a substrate of orchid back and use a section of fake plant to provide cover. I have seeded these tubs with spring tails and I make sure I top up the springs every couple of days. Babies eat a lot of spring tails. For those of you who are not aware springtails are a small hexapod that is more commonly found under damp logs and stones in the garden, think all those tiny white bugs that bounce all over the place. Well great for dart frog breeders they are also very easy to breed. I use a large bucket with a secure lid for culturing springs at the moment. This bucket contains several large lumps of wood charcoal. I put around a centimetre of water at the bottom of the bucket to keep humidity up (the springs don't drown as they are too small to break the surface of the water). I add couscous about twice a week and when it goes mouldy the spring tails explode.... we end up with millions of them after just a few days and if you get it right they can be very easy to culture.

We are also just about ready for our first chameleon eggs to hatch, there are around 18-19 eggs that should be due in the first 2 weeks of September. I'm very excited but could do with a billion trillion squillion more fruit flies as they eat an awful lot for the first few days.
More to come on that in later days and I'll also post about the C.R.E.A.K.S. kidderminster breeders meet in the next couple of days.