Need advice about Kei Island and Merauke breeding

[Scincoides]

Hey everyone, my husband and i have been keeping Northern Blue tongues for years, and have recently added 1.3 Kei Island blue tongues and 1.1 Merauke blue tongues to our collection. We would really like to take a shot at breeding them, but have no idea where to start. We have NO experience breeding any Gigas species, unless you consider Irian Jayas a gigas species. Any advice would be extremely helpful. Thank you

[Richard.C]

love the keis,very nice

i dont think anyone has consistently bred them,so its trial and error i guess to how you go about cycling them,how do u cycle the northerns for breeding,id be starting there,but experiment a bit to,like northerns there classed as a more tropical occuring species,so perhaps a dryseason /wet season cycle,like with pythons from same area,issue is where exactly do they perfer to be in the wild,do they like more foresty areas,open areas ect ect

[Scincoides]

With the northerns, we have always just brumated them then about a month after warming introduce the female to the male. I know that Andrew Seikes website says that his keis are more interested in killing each other than breeding, but ours just seem to ignore each other when introduced. My husband suggested the dry season/wet season cycle. He said they would probably breed in the dry season and give birth in the wet season. Now i just need to figure out when and how to simulate each season. The trial and error method is exciting and frustrating at the same time. I dont think anything we do with t.s.I is going to work here. They come from completely different climates, and have such different care requirements. I think our best bet is to apply the same strategy to breeding keis as standard gigas. Unfortunately we dont have any experience breeding gigas. Hopefully someone on here does. Thanks for the help. Every little bit helps.

[Jeff]

Like Richard said, there really is no one who has made it known that they have consistently bred any of the gigas sub-species other than Bill Schwinn in Florida with meraukes. He is the only one that I am aware of who has had repeated success with them. There is also a Veterenarian in Mesa that is rumored to have bred his Keis successfully, but I am not sure if he is still breeding them. What part of AZ are you in?

It would be great if you could figure them out and tell the rest of us! I have actually spent some time asking around just like you are, but I didn't have much luck finding out anything too useful. Most of the (few) gigas that have been produced in captivity seem to be more or less one hit wonders. Good luck to you though. I have a feeling that they will end up being fairly easy to breed once someone figures out what one important factor has been missed so far. It is possible that Bill Schwinn has already figured it out with the meraukes, so I would probably contact him first. He has emailed me what he does in the past though, and honestly, it is pretty much the same as what works for northerns. That method just doesn't seem to work for other people.

[Richard.C]

florida is a sub tropical type climate yes?does it have a wet dry season thing going on?could that help bill schwinns animals to cycle?if they pick up outside cues,that can help towards cycling them

northern australia wouldnt be to dissimilar to indonesia weather wise

[Fatal_S]

Doesn't Bill keep his together year round? Katrina got lots of breeding behaviour in both fall and spring with her Meraukes, but no babies to show success yet.

[Scincoides]

Thanks everyone for the responses. Jeff, we are in Payson Az. Where are you? I bet the climate in Florida does play a large role. I guess ill just let the humidity drop for a few months and offer food less often to simulate the dry season, then try heavy misting and a ton of food in the fall? Just going to try randomly introducing them weekly between now and fall. I can't imagine housing any bts together year round. Our male Merauke has two toes total on all of his feet combined, I'm assuming that's the result of someone trying to house him with another skink when he was younger. I'd hate to be responsible for any other injuries. That poor skink has been through enough. We introduced a pair of northerns last night, and watched them go from curious to full blown attacking each other in a matter of seconds, and they are a confirmed pair to. My gusband nearly lost a finger breaking them up lol. I'd be afraid of that happening while we werent around to seperate them if we housed a pair together. Thank you guys so much for your help. I can't express how much we appreciate it.

[Jeff]

I personally wouldn't house gigas together, but in all the times that I have paired meraukes for breeding purposes I have never seen the kind of aggression that you will sometimes see in scincoides. My guess is that in general, they are not quite as brutal to each other as many scincoides are. I have left pairs and trios together for as long as 3 hours with only a few quick snaps at each other.

When I try to breed gigas in the future I plan to use a misting machine to manipulate the ambient humidity. I think it is a seperate issue to keep the substrate moist during the "wet" periods. Manually misting can work fine, but in a really dry climate it will really take many mistings a day to keep the humidity up. A mister that can be set on a timer or on a hydrometer would be much less labor intensive, especially at night and when you are not home.

Are you just now beginning to pair your northerns? I am expecting some of my northern females to drop any day now. Four of them have been breathing hard already, as well as an eastern.

I live in the Phoenix area. I was just in Payson this morning. I love it up there! I was bummed that your reptile shop right there on the 87 closed before I had a chance to check it out.

[Scincoides]

Im starting to think I need to buy a mist machine lol. Yeah we love it up here, and our friend shannon and his wife Brooke own that shop. It just moved. Its now in the autozone parking lott if your up here again anytime soon. We are just starting to pair the Northerns because we have been without a male for about a year now. We hadn't planned on breeding blueys again for a while, but we just got a new house, and have plenty of room to raise babies. We would be really interested in a few eastern babies if any are going to be for sale. Easterns are beautiful, and we have never had the pleasure of keeping any. We are planning on opening a shop in fountain hills this year, so we are in the phoenix area at least twice a week. The shop is actually one of the major reasons we want to get the meraukes to breed. We are pretty set on selling only captive bred animals, and would love to have reasonably priced captive bred Merauke blue tongues so that so many people aren't stuck buying WILD animals that were snatched from their homelands and brought into the pet trade. One of the biggest perks about the shop, as far as im concerned, is the fact that we can move all of our animals into the shop, and focus solely on our skinks at home. The keis have my husband fascinated. He is determined to learn everything there is to know about this species and get some information out there for everyone that needs it.

[Richard.C]

not sure a misting machine would be needed,but guess could help,even a morning and or afternoon hand mist may be enough

but northerns dont nessacarilly need it,sogigas may not either,could also be a timing issue,some tiliqua seem to breed better if u wake males earlier than females,alowing them to shed before the females are ready

one area that may be overlooked though,is if u cool them like cut heat right down,like a propper brumation,then bang heat back on straight away,perhaps they miss the middle zone,like late dry season where temps are warm during the day but still cool at night,helping them to cycle for longer?

wish we could keepsome of the indo forms over here,i guess im in a similar boat though,hoping to get centralian blueys to breed consistantly

[Jeff]

I love to hear your commitment to lessening the demand for wild caught animals. I agree with you 100%. I wish more people would put a little effort into learning how to breed Indonesian species rather than just buying them cheap from importers.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the reptile shop moving. I will definitely check it out the next time I am up there during business hours. Nine times out of ten I am up there between 5 and 6 in the morning, so nothing is open though. I work for UPS, and I occassionally drive the trailer with all the UPS packages up. It is not part of my normal run, so I usually have about 5 minutes notice before I head up. My wife and I love to drive up for a day or two whenever we get the chance, (especially during the summer), so hopefully it won't be too long before I get a chance.

I will also come by your shop when when you open. Let us know on the forum or something. There are a few other members of the forum in Arizona too.

I won't have any easterns for sale this year because I still need to build up my group. I will make a post when my next litter of easterns is born, but The eyebanded easterns I am breeding have not been available in the U.S. for the last 25 years or so. I searched for them around the world for a couple years before I found some available in Europe. I bought some babies and raised them up. This is the first year I have bred them. I only got 2 babies from the first female, but the other one is looking like she might do much better. Hopefully, next year I will have plenty of them available.

Richard, many people have been trying to breed gigas like northerns for years. Every once in awhile someone will get a litter, but no one is able to repeat it consistently. The main thing that seems to be an issue is humidity. It is possible that they just need dramatic swings in humidity. Believe me, you can't create constant high humidity where I live by misting twice a day. I can't even keep 10% ambient humidity in my skink enclosures during some months. It really would take many mistings a day to create the kind of humidity they would have in the wild. For someone in a dry climate who is not home all day, a misting machine may be the only way to make the humidity work.

[kl]

I too have had trouble trying to breed Keis. I tried brumating them like other blue tongues but with higher minimum temperatures. I tried timing the introductions of females to males like other species. Nothing worked. They were really violent towards each other no matter what combination of males I used with the females.

Bill in Florida actually bred Keis back in 2010 and he kept them together I believe. I saw the breeding pair and the cage setup. Niles did it a few yrs earlier. Ray Gurgi had babies last season and I think he said he kept the pair together for several days as they were getting along. So far from what I can tell, those that have bred them keep them together for extended times rather than doing supervised mating sessions. While Bill and Ray are in a sub tropical climate, the other breeder is in New Jersey. I do not think they should be any harder to breed than any other blue tongues once we know the requirements for brumation. From a standpoint of temperature, there's little fluctuation in the Kei Islands though there is a significant rainy season. I'm wondering if humidity requirements must be met to stimulate them. Because they are so nervous compared to other types of blue tongues, just introducing the females to the males and then standing there watching them may not work because the females seem to get more nervous about the cage switch than other species of blue tongues plus they seem to get bothered by people standing there watching them. Right now I'm so frustrated by them I'm trying to move them out of my collection but if they are still here by the time Fall rolls around, I have some ideas I might try to get them to breed. It's too bad they are not bred more because some of the nicer colored ones are amongst the most beautiful blue tongues out there.

KL

[Scincoides]

Jeff, thank you, and id love to see some pictures of your esaterns. I will make sure to post on here as soon as the shop opens. On the captive breeding topic, we are either working with, or planning to work with dozens of commonly imported species. We recently met a wonderful woman in tucson that put years of work into figuring out how to breed schneiders skinks. We bought her breeders and two of her holdbacks from last year. We also have fire skinks andd nigerian uross abut to drop for us. We firmly beleive that its our job as reptile owners to propogate these animals in captivity so that the next generation of reptile lovers doesnt have to import their favorite animals.

KL thank you. Id love to see pictures of your keis to compare them to ours. My husband may be interested in taking them off your hands if the price is right I think we may just try putting them together for a few hours at a time in six foot enclosure with lots of visual barriers, supervised of course, after we figure out how to cycle them properly.

[Scincoides]

Sorry about the terrible spelling. I tried posting that with my new phone and it didn't work out too well.

[Richard.C]

thats why i suggested humidity jeff,as its quite dry in your neck of the woods,hot and dry id imagine to,so hard to mimic rainy seasons,like northern australia id imagine the difference between wet/dry season to be immense,they would have day heat year round,but dry season nights possably alot cooler

but a full on cooling works with northerns to,as well as the the way i used,so you would think that would work with gigas to,the aggression from prs sounds similar to northerns,like timing isnt in sync,my northern females go the male if timing isnt right,if they are ready hes the aggressor

could be a timing thing to,pr compatability,simulating wet/dry season

would be great to see them bred more consistantly,i agree with you guys,i dont think it would be hard,its just getting everything worked out,also agree with you kim,they are beautiful animals,the keis especially,but meurakes to

[kl]

Here's the pictures of 3 of my 4. #4 is not very cooperative at being held for a photo.

KL

[Richard.C]

they definatly are very nice looking kim

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

Kim could you post pictures of your female from the pair you are selling? I am VERY interested since brad is keeping all of the keis that I like...

[kl]

The female pictured is the female.

Kim

[Spindown]

I'm interested in breeding Captive Bred Indos, I just need to find a nice looking female at a point where i've got extra money and give it a go next year. Next to a good Classic Merauke, Indos are actually a favorite locality of mine.