A Surprise in the Incubator

Yvonne G

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Yesterday I discovered this lovely, tiny creature in one of my incubators:

eggs 5-23-18.jpg

This incubator is on the upper shelf and I have to stand on a stool to see inside. Yesterday when I opened the incubator I just saw an empty half egg shell as I peeked over the edge of the shelf, so felt around and found the baby. So this a.m. I got my stool and took a look to see if any more eggs had hatched. Oh, lordy, lordy! This is what I found:

eggs 5-23-18 a.jpg
All those brown specks all over the whole box and substrate, and covering that one egg are the chrysalis (?) of gnat maggots.

This clutch of leopard eggs was placed into the incubator on December 28th of last year. How lucky for yesterday's baby to have hatched! I took the box outside and gently tapped the rest of the eggs to break them, to make sure there weren't anymore live babies. There were three dead babies, starting to rot, and the rest of the eggs were not fertile.

I generally only have the gnat problem with YF and Manouria eggs. Sheesh!
 

Bambam1989

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Nope. That is the ONE thing that I can't deal with is maggots. Too many disturbing incidents
 

katieandiggy

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I would freak out completely. In the summer I sometimes get maggots in my binI burn them all with a kettle of boiling water. I’m actually scratching myself just looking at that.
 

daniellenc

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I’d freak out and toss the whole box lol but the first surprise is adorable. And you blindly had your hand in there the day before??
 

CarolM

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Aaawwweee. What a fantastic little surprise. How amazing is that, that the little one hatched. It was obviously ment to be and is a very special little baby. Are you going to keep it, considering how special it is. It will have a great story as part of it's history.
 

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