notes on CH
I'm answering in the thread so others can read some of the info...
First off, I'm getting the idea that every time a clutch is hatched, it imprints on the first temps, humidity, and caging it is put in. It does best when kept exactly in those conditions. In short, everything on my site about raising neonates worked for
my CB clutch, but not necessarily for any other babies you'd get on the market, because they imprinted on different environments.
I tried keeping mine from Mike
the same way I raised my CBs, and the failure was pretty fast and scary. If I hadn't taken weights once a week, I would not have been able to act fast enough to save them. The handling stress from weighing is a catch-22. I'd recommend weighing after lights out, in the dark, so they are less visually traumatized. The CHs here dropped 50% of their initial body weights in seven days. The really frustrating part is that I could see them eating and drinking like normal babies, so the weight loss was a total shock. I called Mike and he advised me to change them back to how he'd set them up originally. Right now, they are still adjusting to the change back. I have four with fat bellies again and two still on the thin side (both from the same clutch). One is getting assist-fed, and I know this is looked down on for babies, but as soon as he takes prey from my fingers, he perks up and basks and acts normal again. Prior to his 1x daily feeding, he's flat and either laying on the paper towel bottom or occasionally I find both his eyes closed. As long as he acts normal afterward, and
takes the food, I'll do it until I see him hunting properly. Everyone else is free-feeding loose prey around them, and their dorsums have plumped up again.
The weight loss signs seem to be: first the belly pudge goes, then the dorsum gets thin, then the tail gets thin... past that, their heads start to look too big for them, and that's a hard stage to recover from.
Right now, the ambient temp is 77F in their room, which is 2 degrees past overheating-gaping-white for my 05 clutch. No joke. The CH I have here really like it warm. I am misting about 4x a day, very briefly, enough to make droplets on the leaves, which they lap up as the mood strikes. I am putting in small amounts of loose prey about 3x a day. This seems to be working, and I'll let you guys know the empirical data of this care revision on the next weighing day.
The room they are in is very brightly lit with white walls, they have a 5.0 stretched over the tub, and a 50w ReptiBulb in one corner. No eye swelling on these that would indicate the UVB is too strong- are you sure that is why Pat's eyes are closed? He may just be doing what my guys did, stress at the new cage style...? Are his eyes swelling?
It's not an age nor a species that can afford a stubborn keeper- even if what you've experienced before doesn't mesh with what you are observing now... like me, staring in disbelief at the digital temps and the happily basking CHs... revise until it works.
