Female in the hole again. A few questions

[Cainschams]

Well she is at it again. My female panther is begining to lay her 2nd sperm retention clutch almost 2 months later. After finding this site and reading more on cutting back temps and food intake to produce smaller clutches I have a question. I think all that is in check. I will know after i see the clutch as long as everything is going alright in there. Last time she laid 24 eggs it was actually a little more than the first but they were a little smaller. Any way after she laid the clutch before this she seemed to only be receptive for a few weeks after if that. Then bam started producing another clutch. Ive read you should give them 3 months or so to recover before mating again. The people I got her off of said that once she mates you might as well keep on because sperm retention might cause less eggs to be as healthy and fertile but with her only being receptive for that short period of time and then starting to produce eggs I cant wait 3 months. Is this a sign that my cutting down on temps and food intake did not work? Is there a way to make them wait longer? She is my pet and I want her to live as long as possible.

 

[kinyonga]

With veileds, the egg production seems to be able to be controlled by diet and temperature. However, with panther chameleons, all I seem to be able to do is keep the size of the clutch small (around 2 dozen). They still produce eggs at every cycle.

They also seem to retain sperm for longer periods of time than the veileds do....but there seems to be a decline in the robustness of each clutch the longer the sperm is retained.

In my experience, if you want to be sure that ALL of the following clutch is fertile, you need to mate her at the first sign that she is willing to mate after she lays a clutch. However, I don't know if this makes her ditch the retained sperm or not.

 

[Cainschams]

Thanks so much for the info. I am going to incubate these eggs at a higher temp starting off to prolong the incubation period so I dont have 24 hatch then 24 hatch 2 months later haha and I will have another controlled incubation process to compare the results to. Another thing is that the Female is from a blue bar ambilobe that shows tons of purples through out his body along with green/red body that was mated with a female with high yellow body and red bars. The males parents are both yellow body red bar. This will be cool to see how the babys turn out and add another scenario to the what happens when you cross blue with red bar ambilobes.

 

[Cainschams]

Everything went well. It took her a little over 6 hours. 28 eggs all seem to be fertile at the moment. The clutch again was smaller than the one before. Comparing to the first clutch I really dont know though because I think they broke diapause because they are def getting bigger. Oh the anticipation. Just wanted to let everyone know that the female has done her job and ate and drank like a pig last night and today.

 

[Cameochams]

Good luck. Its going to be interesting to see how the babies come out.

 

[Cainschams]

Thank you. I cant wait to see how they will turn out. The people I got them off of said they would produce orange offspring with the red and yellow bodies. Well reading around here and the few posts about mixing bars I highly doubt this will be the case but I dont know we will have to see. Regardless I hope to be a daddy soon hahaha man I never thought i would be saying that and the health of them all is the most important. Oh and I hope charmeleon is a daddy soon also.