Mel's Exotics

To break up the constant stream of baby skink photos (there’s more coming, no worries) here’s some pictures of the geckos living here at ME 🙂

Yesterday was cleaning/feeding day for the geckos. I have three groups of young geckos here:
My patternless fat tails:

My caramel fat tails:

And my whiteout group of fat tails:

While I cleaned out their bins the geckos got a short bath. Unlike the baby skinks, the fatties do not get regular baths – they actually notice each other and must be watched very closely (I don’t want any underaged breeding during bath time). One benefit of the bath though is I get to help out with any leftover shed. This time two geckos had a bit of shed on their toes, and one had some shed on her head:

The toe shed is super easy to remove, but the head shed took a bit of extra effort. Thanks to a small piece of wet paper towel and a moist q-tip, she was back to her usual gorgeous self in no time:

While the geckos were in the bath, I cleaned out their bins. The bins were pretty dirty to start with:

Everything is removed, the geckos are put in the bath, and I get to work doing a quick scrub-down of the bins:

Then the bins get new paper towel (lightly sprayed) and the moist hide is soaked down and replaced. Before going home the geckos get a quick cuddle/checked for shed:

Clean gecko bins:

For feeding times all my geckos get a nice yummy dish of mealworms, lightly dusted with calcium-plus:

Happy geckos:

I also have a group of three adult fat tails living together in a large PVC tank. The male only eats frozen/thawed pinky mice, but I’m trying to convert him over. This group also got fed and I took a few quick photos:

Lastly, and not a gecko, my boa Pooch also got fed. He’s a hungry little bugger now, and tried to rush me when I was taking too long to give him his rat, lol. He’s a wonderful snake, and I’m glad he’s finally got his appetite turned on 😀

I hope you’re enjoying these little peaks into life here at ME. I promise there’s more baby photos on the way!

Looking after a horde of animals means spending a lot of time cleaning, feeding, playing, and cleaning some more. Today I took some photos of what the babies did for a quick behind-the-scenes look at life here at ME.

First off I gave all the babies a bath. Bathtime here serves a few purposes: the babies get a drink of water, I get to make sure there’s no issues like stuck shed, and I can clean out all the bins while the babies are soaking. It’s also a great time for some pictures.
The 14 caramel northern babies:


The 6 classic northern babies:

The babies also get weighed regularly to make sure they’re growing well:

For feeding time I first prepare a yummy meal (today was an egg, a bit of dog food, and some greens) and cut 10 regular food dishes in half to make 20 baby-size dishes. The babies eat stunningly tiny amounts compared to the adults:

And then the little guys get to chow down:

A few notes:
1) You may have noticed there are only 14 caramels in today’s photos. One baby was very weak; he had some internal issues and sadly did not make it. All the remaining babies are eating and pooping constantly – a great sign that they’re healthy little squirts.
2) One caramel baby is missing the very tip of it’s tail. It’s possible it was born that way or that a sibling grabbed it when they were first born. The baby is perfectly healthy (may even be a holdback, he’s so pretty), I just wanted to address it in case anyone was wondering.
3) So far two babies have started shedding. I expect the rest should start in the next couple days. Hopefully the majority will be done by next weekend so I can get some pretty photos of them for the available page 🙂
4) Still no change in my other possible-preggo girls. Fat and lazy as usual, lol.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. This week the babies will start being handled much more and maybe even take their first trip outdoors 🙂 So stay tuned for more photos.