Premature "Twins" - GRAPHIC Update May 23, 2011

[Jeff]

I hope this doesn't disturb anyone, but I thought it was worth posting. This morning I weighed all of my gravid females as I do every week. I didn't notice anything unusual at that time, but about two hours later when I was removing the cypress mulch substrate from all of their enclosures, I found this.







I was removing the substrate and replacing it with carpet because the first of my females should start giving birth in between 12 - 19 days.

It is interesting that the two of these babies are both attached to the same placenta. When I picked up the placenta, the umbilical cords were strong enough to hold the weight of the babies. I am assuming that this means these two are twins.

The mother of these mated for the first time last year, but did not give birth to any babies. I will be monitoring her closely to see what happens next.

[Coomassie]

Keep us updated on Mom. I'm curious to see if she has any other babies.

[Susann]

How incredibly sad, but amazing at the same time!

And, if I may say so, according to the Bluey Bible, it's a yolk-sac, not a placenta.

They look like they are still surrounded by a thin membrane or sac, is this correct? I would have imagined there to be more fluid inside... and also that the yolk-sac would be inside this membrane...?

[Alioop]

This is really interesting. Thanks for sharing it Jeff, please keep us posted on Momma Skink's progress.

[Zach]

Thank for posting, Jeff. It's tough to discover, but as breeders, will eventually run into things like this.

[Katrina]

Yes - thanks for posting. This is very interesting. Any updates on the mother?

[Jeff]

The mother is behaving the same as she did before delivering the two still born babies. There is no indication that there is anything wrong with her, and I have no idea if she is carrying more babies or not. I would be surprised if she only had two fertilized eggs though, because she mated with a proven male 8 times. She is not huge like some females get but she is noticeably bulkier than she normally is. I will know one way or the other in a few weeks.

[Jeff]

Well after updating this morning, I came home to find that this mother (Nancy) had just given birth to one live baby. I think I checked on her within seconds of her giving birth. The afterbirth was still attached, and the baby immediately ate it.

I watched Nancy closely for about 45 minutes, but she had no more babies. I think me watching her may have caused her some stress, so I left her alone for 2 hours. When I checked on her then, I found 3 more live babies and 4 slugs.

It is now 3 hours after that, and nothing else has appeared in her enclosure.

Here are a few quick pictures of the babies, and one of the slugs. The dark specks on the slugs are just debris that stuck to them from the bottom of the enclosure. There was some dust left from the cypress substrate that was in there before I replaced it with carpet last week.

[Nae]

Aaaw, they are so cute, congrats! Its such a shame about the first two, but its quite interesting.

Wondering, what exactly are slugs?

[Richard.C]

nae,slugs are unfertilised ova,eg if they are fertilised then they are babies,if not they pop out slugs

i havnt had twins to my knowledge before,but my main alpine female once had premature babies,only 2 babies were born alive,they were extremely transparent,and died 4 and 6 weeks later unfortunatly,alot of the time slugs go unnoticed as the mother normally eats them,if not a cage mate,glad mums ok jeff and had a few healthy looking ones,thanks for sharing

[Nae]

Ah, I see, thank you!

[dsteamn]

So so interesting. Thanks for posting - and congrats on the little ones.

[Raven_Vivi]

grats on the babies!!!

[SapphireTigress1]

interesting, thanks for sharing, too bad about the babies, but grats for the healthy ones