jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
Back in December, one of my quad females laid a ridiculously large clutch of 29 eggs which is about three times the normal number. I don't think one was properly calcified, with most if not all showing patches of yellow where you could see the yolk through the thin, poorly calcified shell. It was an awful looking clutch of eggs. My vet said there were too many eggs for her to be able to properly calcify. Many went bad almost right away. Seventeen or eighteen seemed to develop even though they were different sizes and shapes. I did not expect any to hatch but I incubated them anyway.
As they grew, a few burst their shells killing the embryos leaving me with fifteen eggs of various shapes and sizes.
A couple of days ago around the expected hatch date, I thought another had burst its shell. It sure didn't look like any hatching egg I've ever seen. Instead of nice neat seeping slits in the egg, there was a big blob of thick gelatinous goop coming out of one end of the egg. That was exactly what the split eggs had looked like a month or two earlier. I should have just wiped the goop away, allowing the baby to breathe if it was still alive, but instead I pulled it out of the shell. It was close to death and died. I wonder if I had treated it like a hatching egg if it would still be alive.
The next day, more started doing the same thing. This time I left them alone and they hatched. Many had very large egg yolks. So far, 10 have hatched and are doing well. An 11th has its head out and three to go.
For the first time, I watched one hatch. It had a really big yolk, with lots of big, bright red blood vessels. I immediately put it in a little deli cup hoping it wouldn't break the egg yolk or a blood vessel and bleed out. It was really vigorous. In hindsight, I should have put it in complete darkness hoping to keep it still. I checked on it an hour or so later and it was those awful death colors with it's mouth open but still barely alive if I touched it. I figured it had hemorrhaged in the egg yolk. I put it in the incubator where it was a little cooler and darker and waited for it to die. I checked on it again, and by then it's tongue was hanging out and it was almost non responsive. I left the top of the deli cup ajar because the eternal optimist in me thought it it would need all the oxygen it could get. A couple of hours later, I went to check on it and found the top of the deli cup moved and it not in the deli cup. I found it crawling around in the bottom of the incubator all nice and green. It looks good this morning, still with a big fleshy stump.
This is the baby that looked dead--mouth open, tongue out, splotchy blanched death colors. Sorry for the blurry picture. You can still see the remnants of the large egg yolk.
This is that same baby just hatching, still partly in the egg. I did not like seeing those bright red blood vessels.
Here is the one of the last four eggs that is hatching. You can see how poorly calcified it is. Notice the bleeding through the shell in the second picture. The third picture was taken this morning.
I examined the empty eggs. One had some sort of weird growth inside the egg. The growth iis firmly attached to the inside surface of the shell. Note: the deviation on the surface only showed up when the egg started to dry out. When the egg was moist, the surface was smooth. I have all the empty eggs in the fridge and will be contacting a friend who has a PhD in avian reproductive physiology.
Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? It looks like the egg successfully walled off some sort of infection. I don't know which baby hatched out of that egg. That baby also had a very strange egg yolk sack. The fifth picture of that series shows what was left of the egg yolk inside the egg. It was half in and half out of the egg. The green/tan bit is a piece of vermiculite. The egg beside it is not the egg in question but it does give a bit of size reference.
They aren't out of the woods yet. I worry that bacteria has entered the egg through the very poor quality shell. When this happens in chicks, they develop egg yolk peritonitis and die a couple of days after hatching.
Has anyone else had this kind of a hatch that ended well?
As they grew, a few burst their shells killing the embryos leaving me with fifteen eggs of various shapes and sizes.
A couple of days ago around the expected hatch date, I thought another had burst its shell. It sure didn't look like any hatching egg I've ever seen. Instead of nice neat seeping slits in the egg, there was a big blob of thick gelatinous goop coming out of one end of the egg. That was exactly what the split eggs had looked like a month or two earlier. I should have just wiped the goop away, allowing the baby to breathe if it was still alive, but instead I pulled it out of the shell. It was close to death and died. I wonder if I had treated it like a hatching egg if it would still be alive.
The next day, more started doing the same thing. This time I left them alone and they hatched. Many had very large egg yolks. So far, 10 have hatched and are doing well. An 11th has its head out and three to go.
For the first time, I watched one hatch. It had a really big yolk, with lots of big, bright red blood vessels. I immediately put it in a little deli cup hoping it wouldn't break the egg yolk or a blood vessel and bleed out. It was really vigorous. In hindsight, I should have put it in complete darkness hoping to keep it still. I checked on it an hour or so later and it was those awful death colors with it's mouth open but still barely alive if I touched it. I figured it had hemorrhaged in the egg yolk. I put it in the incubator where it was a little cooler and darker and waited for it to die. I checked on it again, and by then it's tongue was hanging out and it was almost non responsive. I left the top of the deli cup ajar because the eternal optimist in me thought it it would need all the oxygen it could get. A couple of hours later, I went to check on it and found the top of the deli cup moved and it not in the deli cup. I found it crawling around in the bottom of the incubator all nice and green. It looks good this morning, still with a big fleshy stump.
This is the baby that looked dead--mouth open, tongue out, splotchy blanched death colors. Sorry for the blurry picture. You can still see the remnants of the large egg yolk.
This is that same baby just hatching, still partly in the egg. I did not like seeing those bright red blood vessels.
Here is the one of the last four eggs that is hatching. You can see how poorly calcified it is. Notice the bleeding through the shell in the second picture. The third picture was taken this morning.
I examined the empty eggs. One had some sort of weird growth inside the egg. The growth iis firmly attached to the inside surface of the shell. Note: the deviation on the surface only showed up when the egg started to dry out. When the egg was moist, the surface was smooth. I have all the empty eggs in the fridge and will be contacting a friend who has a PhD in avian reproductive physiology.
Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? It looks like the egg successfully walled off some sort of infection. I don't know which baby hatched out of that egg. That baby also had a very strange egg yolk sack. The fifth picture of that series shows what was left of the egg yolk inside the egg. It was half in and half out of the egg. The green/tan bit is a piece of vermiculite. The egg beside it is not the egg in question but it does give a bit of size reference.
They aren't out of the woods yet. I worry that bacteria has entered the egg through the very poor quality shell. When this happens in chicks, they develop egg yolk peritonitis and die a couple of days after hatching.
Has anyone else had this kind of a hatch that ended well?
