Kinyongia boehmei

[Seeco]

Geez, Ferdy. I'm really sorry about the babies. I can't really give you any advice on incubating them since I incubated mine in situ. They were buried in a group about 3-4 cm below the surface of the soil which is a mix of potting soil, dirt and pulverized coco fiber. I kept the enclosure the same temp and humidity as I do for the adults. Some days it rained harder than others and I didn't measure how much water I was spraying. But, it was a rare thing that water actually got to the eggs. The soil was not moist but it wasn't dried out either. I don't know if having the eggs essentially in contact with one another under the soil made a difference. The soil on top of them didn't seem to impede them much -- two were out of the eggs and one was clawing up through the dirt and another already out of the dirt when I noticed what was going on. I dug the rest up and they all hatched fairly quiklly after that. I did give on a little help as he seemed stuck in the egg. They are all (5) doing well at 12 days of age.

The second clutch were duds -- they were shriveled and there were no embyos at all in any of the five eggs.

I got the idea for incubating them in place from a documentary I was watching on Africa and it happened to include a bit on chameleons. Basically, I figured that the eggs get laid in the ground during the rainy season and then the babies have to dig out when the soil might be a bit hard. I figured if they could dig out of hard semi-dry soil, they could dig out in an exoterra. It was not quite a full moon and the barometric pressure was gently dropping the afternoon they hatched. But it was clear and realtively warm (50-ish F).

Hope your adults are up for trying again soon.

Very cool.

 

[jojothefirst]

Very good information in this thread.
I'm getting a group of these in a few days with 3 pregnant females so this thread has been very helpful.

 

[Seeco]

Pics please!

 

[jojothefirst]

Pics please!

Just got these today very happy with them.1 male 3 girls.

 

[Seeco]

Wow they look very healthy!

 

[jojothefirst]

Wow they look very healthy!

I'm glad you think so. The lady who I bought them from looked after all her chameleons very well. I also got a female Ellioti from her aswell. Very lucky to be working with these species, they don't come up often in the uk.

 

[coldbloodedAL]

Very nice!!! Keep us updated on these guys!

 

[Cainschams]

Really nice looking animals! The female looks rather plump. Hopefully she has some fertile eggs cooking

 

[jojothefirst]

Very nice!!! Keep us updated on these guys!

Really nice looking animals! The female looks rather plump. Hopefully she has some fertile eggs cooking

Cheers, I will do, there seems to be a lot more appreciation for these guy in the US.... there's very little info that I can find in the UK.
They where all mated around 3 weeks ago, the 2 bigger girls where mated with my male and the other was mated with a different male. All 3 girls are unrelated to each other as well so if all goes to plan I could have two clutches of unrelated eggs soon.

 

[Sticktongue]

Super super nice animals. You're one lucky dog to find those!

 

[jojothefirst]

Super super nice animals. You're one lucky dog to find those!

I'm very happy with mine so far. Would love successfully hatch the eggs they lay.

 

[Seeco]

We would all love that!

 

[Ferdy Timmerman]

Found myself some new boehmei yesterday, this time they're CH. I talked to the seller, he told me the eggs were incubated in an incubator with some snake eggs, since he didn't have room anywhere else. As a result, the eggs were supposedly incubated at 28 degrees C and hatched after about 110 days. This really surprised me...

 

[Motherlode Chameleon]

Found myself some new boehmei yesterday, this time they're CH. I talked to the seller, he told me the eggs were incubated in an incubator with some snake eggs, since he didn't have room anywhere else. As a result, the eggs were supposedly incubated at 28 degrees C and hatched after about 110 days. This really surprised me...

Congratulations and great pick up! I want to work with species if they become available again.

 

[Seeco]

Lol that's awesome

 

[jojothefirst]

Found myself some new boehmei yesterday, this time they're CH. I talked to the seller, he told me the eggs were incubated in an incubator with some snake eggs, since he didn't have room anywhere else. As a result, the eggs were supposedly incubated at 28 degrees C and hatched after about 110 days. This really surprised me...

Oh, wow, that's not even 4 months! Very interesting.would you consider him to be reliable?

 

[spadefish]

Found myself some new boehmei yesterday, this time they're CH. I talked to the seller, he told me the eggs were incubated in an incubator with some snake eggs, since he didn't have room anywhere else. As a result, the eggs were supposedly incubated at 28 degrees C and hatched after about 110 days. This really surprised me...

I would be interested to see how well they do. Are they smaller than you would expect? I've experimented with temps a bit with day geckos. The warmer the incubation temps, the shorter the incubation and the smaller the babies. When we have cooled the incubation temps down, we get a longer cooking time and bigger, healthier babies. I'd love to hear what you think of the boehmei size and overall health given the short incubation.

 

[jojothefirst]

i would be interested to see how well they do. Are they smaller than you would expect? I've experimented with temps a bit with day geckos. The warmer the incubation temps, the shorter the incubation and the smaller the babies. When we have cooled the incubation temps down, we get a longer cooking time and bigger, healthier babies. I'd love to hear what you think of the boehmei size and overall health given the short incubation.

+1

 

[Ferdy Timmerman]

I agree with you guys, in most cases you'll get healthier, stronger babies when using relatively lower incubation temperatures. Therefore I'd never experiment with such high incubation temps myself.

My new boehmei's are doing well as far as I can see. Only one of the females had something in her eye the day after I bought them. This seems to be bothering her still, even though I got the piece of dirt (or whatever it was) out of the eye immediately.
All three boehmei's always drink when I mist them, and always eat when I feed them. They are a bit shy when I approach them, but from a distance I can see they normally are quite lively.

I forgot to measure their weight, so I'll do that today and see how they grow in the next months.

I'll keep you updated every once in a while

 

[Ferdy Timmerman]

Here's some advice: don't incubate boehmei eggs at high temperatures.

I lost one female, the second one is showing the same signs. I am 99,9% sure she won't make it either.

The male is doing very well, however. The seller told me that the male was from a different clutch than the females, so maybe the females' clutch received higher temperatures or something. I asked about this in an email to the seller, still waiting for a reply though.