Eggciting Times Round 2!

Lolly laid her second clutch of the season this afternoon.  My beautiful wife rang me at work to let me know that she though Lolly might be in the throws of laying as she had dug herself a mighty hole in the laying box.  It turns out she was entirely correct.  I had been expecting Lolly to lay as early as last weekend as she had been giving off plenty of signs that she was getting close.  I guess no one can rush a mother or her babies and nature just has to take its course as it were.

You can see in the first photo, that by the time I came home from work, Lolly was just finishing up.  The egg you can see in the back left corner was the only thing giving away her nest site.  For some reason, she left that one on the surface.  The rest were well and truly buried at the bottom.  I was able to see the technique she used to compact the sand to settle and maybe disguise the site.  It was fascinating to see her using her head to bash the sand down and the force with which this was done.  Given the location of the egg you can see on top (ie directly on top of the nest site), I moved it to the far corner of the lay box to protect it.

In this next photo, you can see the clutch itself.  I retrieved 24 eggs this time.  Unfortunately there were 7 other eggs that were either infertile, referred to as slugs, or that had been crushed.  With a total of 31 eggs, this was Lolly's largest clutch.  I wonder if that is why there were infertile eggs. In the case of what look to be the viable eggs, there is the general appearance of them being longer and flatter than her previous clutches.  I am hoping that it is just that prior to laying that things were just a little squishy in there.  They might round out a bit now that they are out and about as it were.

The final picture you can see here is the proud Mum to be, literally basking in the afterglow of her big effort of the afternoon.  At this point she had relaxed in a nice warm bath and had actually coloured up very nicely.  This photo doesn't do the yellow colouration she had on display justice.  She is a beautiful dragon and I am really hopeful that her genetics combined with Beau's will produce some excellent offspring.

For now, she has time to recover and I will be pumping her full of good tucker to help her recover and fatten up.  Chances are she will lay once or twice more this season.  I have promised her the year off next year.  I think she has well and truly earned it!