What an exciting day!
Please note: the retail store has closed, we are leaving these posts up for historical purposes.
Our female Blue-tongued Skink gave birth to eight babies on May 31!
She started about 12:45 p.m., and the first seven were born in about 90 minutes. The straggler wasn’t born until after 5 p.m. It was a remarkable process to watch. Several were born breech; for those the mother reached back and grabbed the baby’s tail in her mouth, and pulled them out! One of the last was born still covered by the amniotic sac. It struggled for a moment until the father (who carefully inspected each newcomer) licked the sac away from the baby’s face, and it was able to take a deep breath.
Each baby took only moments to gain its senses, and then it ate its own yolk sack and umbilical. Marcia took each baby, gave it a gentle bath to remove any remaining birth materials, and placed them in their new home. These guys are born ravenous, and they enjoyed a meal of chicken cat food as their first meal within minutes of birth.
We will make sure that these guys are all healthy and eating well, and then make them available for purchase in a couple weeks to a month.
Rainforest Station always offers a wide variety of exotic pets, featuring the largest selection of poison dart frogs, tree frogs and terrestrial frogs you’ll find in a retail store in the Midwest. You’ll also find leopard geckos, crested geckos, gargoyle geckos, and other gecko species; bearded dragons and other lizards (currently featuring baby savannah monitors, adult blue-tongued skinks, Asian water dragons, lacertas, ameivas ), turtles and tortoises, corn snakes and ball pythons, an assortment of tarantulas, and even some amphibians with tails: tiger salamanders, spotted salamanders, Spanish (Iberia) ribbed newts, California newts, and Axolotl larvae.
If you’re into tarantulas, we have everything from beginner species, such as the Chilean Red Rose-Hair to advanced species such as the Sri Lanka Ornamental Tarantula.
If you are looking for any other species, please drop us a line and we’ll do our best to track it down. And, of course, we have more roaches, crickets, wax worms, fruit flies, and bean beetles than you can shake a stick at.
We also carry a full line of products from manufacturers such as, Exo Terra, Zoo Med, Zilla, Flukers, Tetra, as well as an indoor greenhouse with a wide variety of tropical plants to furnish your naturalistic terrariums and vivariums.
You can shop on-line or stop by and see us. We’re just a mile east of the I-96 interchange, at 6248 28th St. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546. Or, we offer free delivery of items purchased on-line to any of the shows at which we are a vendor.