I'll try to fill out the info about her first as best as I can remember it...
Enclosure: 18x18x36 screen.
Watering/Humidity: Drip and Mist, we mist frequently. Especially knowing that the humidity levels drop during the summer months with the AC units in the house.
Heat and Light: We have classic heat lamp one side/UVA bulb other side combo and a red heat light for night. Temps are consistently in the mid 80's.
Calcium: We gut load and dust with reptocal (that has D3 in it as well)
Food: Crickets, occasional leafy vegetation (romaine and spinach) (I'd love it if she'd eat roaches but, unlike my male, won't touch them.)
Droppings: consistent and normal (not orange)
History... this would be the long part. As far as I have read, she is not your norm for a female veiled.
Here are all the problems... I'll start back, LOL.
At about 9 months on we tried to give her every means to lay unfertilized eggs short of putting her in a bin and closing the lid for a few days. She was obviously getting to a point we were concerned that she was egg-bound. We even built up a "scaffolding" around the bucket rim thinking maybe she wouldn't because the dirt in the bucket wasn't technically the "bottom" of her enclosure where she just kept going. (see other post) So we went against most advice about a first clutch and we bred her with our male thinking that maybe she just wasn't going to lay those eggs unless they were fertilized.
We were spot on. She went right to business with our male and a little over two weeks later went straight to digging and laying. (We've read it takes about 30 days after copulation... again, not the norm). When she layed, she layed a clutch of 33 eggs. (!) (All of which appear to be fertile to this day).
After that she seemed the happiest little cham she'd been in a long time. We went straight to plumping her back up and getting her calcium levels back into par, after the calcium drain of laying.
I'm not sure if we simply hadn't noticed immediately, or if it happened gradually in the couple weeks after laying; but we noticed that several of her claws went missing. Some look very dark, like maybe they broke while digging and now there is some residual "soil" in where they once were. (?) I looked through the forums and found this to be somewhat normal. And got the tip to line the enclosure with a plastic fencing mesh (which works quite well for her when she wants to grasp the enclosure sides).
Here's the up to speed issues though... because of the missing claws she has more trouble climbing. She's taken a couple falls we think as we found her asleep at the bottom of the enclosure. It's been about a week now since then.
I've noticed (as I work VERY early in the morning) that she is sometimes awake in the middle of the night. (And often she sleeps for periods during the day now). I'm wondering if a fall may have occurred during one of the times she was awake at night... not climbing well AND not able to see what she's doing. I've not seen her fall during the day but my wife said she did once.
Now we have towels at the bottom of her enclosure to "cushion" any possible falls, and we leave a light on at night in the corner of the room... so that while it's still dim, it isn't totally dark. Since then we have not observed bottom of cage behavior.
Now things are progressing in other ways, however. She's stopped eating since yesterday (she's typically a very good eater), and I saw her tonight leaning very low on a branch gaping as if in pain for nearly a solid minute. She had crickets in her cup adjacent to where she was at (is her tongue stuck maybe? NO idea what the gaping signifies); and she was head bobbing soon after that (like my male in his mating behavior).
She layed eggs about 4 weeks ago. She's plump again, and it does appear to be bumpy protrusions. They look the same as when she was ready to lay. But it seems WAY to soon for that. Right???? When she saw our male during cleaning last week from across the room, she turned the black-yellow-turquoise gravid colors again. Is all this adding up to her needing to lay -AGAIN?
Please, any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Enclosure: 18x18x36 screen.
Watering/Humidity: Drip and Mist, we mist frequently. Especially knowing that the humidity levels drop during the summer months with the AC units in the house.
Heat and Light: We have classic heat lamp one side/UVA bulb other side combo and a red heat light for night. Temps are consistently in the mid 80's.
Calcium: We gut load and dust with reptocal (that has D3 in it as well)
Food: Crickets, occasional leafy vegetation (romaine and spinach) (I'd love it if she'd eat roaches but, unlike my male, won't touch them.)
Droppings: consistent and normal (not orange)
History... this would be the long part. As far as I have read, she is not your norm for a female veiled.
Here are all the problems... I'll start back, LOL.
At about 9 months on we tried to give her every means to lay unfertilized eggs short of putting her in a bin and closing the lid for a few days. She was obviously getting to a point we were concerned that she was egg-bound. We even built up a "scaffolding" around the bucket rim thinking maybe she wouldn't because the dirt in the bucket wasn't technically the "bottom" of her enclosure where she just kept going. (see other post) So we went against most advice about a first clutch and we bred her with our male thinking that maybe she just wasn't going to lay those eggs unless they were fertilized.
We were spot on. She went right to business with our male and a little over two weeks later went straight to digging and laying. (We've read it takes about 30 days after copulation... again, not the norm). When she layed, she layed a clutch of 33 eggs. (!) (All of which appear to be fertile to this day).
After that she seemed the happiest little cham she'd been in a long time. We went straight to plumping her back up and getting her calcium levels back into par, after the calcium drain of laying.
I'm not sure if we simply hadn't noticed immediately, or if it happened gradually in the couple weeks after laying; but we noticed that several of her claws went missing. Some look very dark, like maybe they broke while digging and now there is some residual "soil" in where they once were. (?) I looked through the forums and found this to be somewhat normal. And got the tip to line the enclosure with a plastic fencing mesh (which works quite well for her when she wants to grasp the enclosure sides).
Here's the up to speed issues though... because of the missing claws she has more trouble climbing. She's taken a couple falls we think as we found her asleep at the bottom of the enclosure. It's been about a week now since then.
I've noticed (as I work VERY early in the morning) that she is sometimes awake in the middle of the night. (And often she sleeps for periods during the day now). I'm wondering if a fall may have occurred during one of the times she was awake at night... not climbing well AND not able to see what she's doing. I've not seen her fall during the day but my wife said she did once.
Now we have towels at the bottom of her enclosure to "cushion" any possible falls, and we leave a light on at night in the corner of the room... so that while it's still dim, it isn't totally dark. Since then we have not observed bottom of cage behavior.
Now things are progressing in other ways, however. She's stopped eating since yesterday (she's typically a very good eater), and I saw her tonight leaning very low on a branch gaping as if in pain for nearly a solid minute. She had crickets in her cup adjacent to where she was at (is her tongue stuck maybe? NO idea what the gaping signifies); and she was head bobbing soon after that (like my male in his mating behavior).
She layed eggs about 4 weeks ago. She's plump again, and it does appear to be bumpy protrusions. They look the same as when she was ready to lay. But it seems WAY to soon for that. Right???? When she saw our male during cleaning last week from across the room, she turned the black-yellow-turquoise gravid colors again. Is all this adding up to her needing to lay -AGAIN?
Please, any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
) We'll go again from there. Thanks again guys!
