Thank you all, thank you very much!
Since I've updated news on this little project on various forums, I'm going to make it easier for myself and copy this same message to all of them and save some typing time...
So, on the night of July 16th, after the lights went off at about 11:00pm the female started to move about. I was certain that something's going to happen. She had been really plump and for the last days or weeks rather loosely coiled.
I thought I'd gave her a drink by misting/raining, and she paused for a moment to drink. As she quit drinking, it didn't take long for her to resume moving, and now she would undulate her rear end, which was slightly opened.
This took, by my estimation, about 2-3 hours. I was getting worried that things might've gotten stuck, and I was worried out of my mind...
As I checked upon her, past midnight, I noticed an unfertilized egg at the floor of the terrarium. I looked around and noticed not one but two babies crawling at the bottom as well! I was stunned and happy, this was twice as many babies as last year!
I was up until about 05:00am, July 17th, to periodically check on the female. At that point I had discovered 6 unfertilized masses and 5 live babies.
Can you imagine?! 5 live ones! Man I almost couldn't believe that.
The next morning I took the female out, and it felt like there'd be 3 small, round objects in her rear end. To this day I have not found anything more in the terrarium, and I have searched it twice. I probably will do it once more though...
At the time of this writing, all the babies are doing just fine. As I've stated before, they seem to be quite easily stressed and they are quick to leave the scene at the sight of any disturbance. A quality which, at times, makes tease-feeding a tricky business.
Later in the evening of 17th I gave the female a moderately sized mouse to help restore her energy. She took it very eagerly.
I am considering giving her a year off now, while hoping that she'd have further years ahead of her so that I could attempt breeding her again.
I attempted to feed the babies on the night of the 19th. 3 out of 5 ate several pinkie parts. They have the size to eat newborn pinks, but I believe I need to start them on bits and pieces.
At a first glance sexing these little guys by the size of their tail seemed a bit difficult, as they are almost identical in length. Will give it a shot at some point though.
I find it interesting that both litters had 5 babies and some unfertilized masses. Survival rate is different, but what affected that is a mystery to me.
I really hope that this species would continue to breed, as I would like to get more results to see if the 'problem' is with the male or the female. I was wondering if the male hasn't been cool enough to produce good enough sperm...
This year the female has had slightly cooler temps during the summer than last year. Not much, but a bit.
Hopefully in the future other individuals would breed as well.
Furthermore...
The old female that was collected gravid still has no interest in the advances of my adult male. That female gave birth to 2.1 babies less than a month after her arrival. They are now 2+ years old, and the female has nice size to her - should all go well, I believe she'd be old & big enough to have a male introduced to her next year.
And now, the pictures to accompany the long text...
I only took few photos of this one baby being born to avoid stressing the female.
The first shed.
Individually housed the next day after being born.
This setup should be quite familiar to most Finns; these are the plastic boxes you get for free from most video rental stores, they get their bulk candy in these.
The flash easily makes the babies look lighter in color in most photos.
This is how dark they actually appear to the naked eye.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little presentation. Or at least the photos...
Yeah, Peter, I know where you live... At this point I can't make any promises though. I need to see that they will keep doing great, and I need to sex them before I can even consider letting anyone go
Stefan, you're welcome to come over any time, with or without a camera.
I'll keep udating this should any newsworthy issues arise.
Tue 21 Jul - 22:20
good that they do beter then last time,goodluck in futher raising them
Exellent Christian ... that 0901 is amazingly coloured (on my eyes) and hope that you "give us" a new litter to admire this year.