F4_2009 Clutch - all out

The Yellow Belly clutch is all out now... as incredible as it sounds, we had 6 Yellow Bellies and 4 normals... the odds are quite high on mutations for the first two clutches, so "statistically speaking", I'll probably get hit on some of the next clutches, like the Espresso line breeding clutch that is about to hatch in 2 days. Tomorrow is day 54, I believe that tomorrow night, if nothing is out, I'm going in. It was incredibly difficult not opening them up today. I really like to let them tell me when they are ready by slicing the eggs. I know it will be perfectly acceptable and safe to cut them open tomorrow night. The wait continues....

The Yellow Bellies aren't as bad as I first thought... They are not as dramatic as the male used to produce this clutch, but they are very nice Yellow Bellies nonetheless. When you breed a Yellow Belly to another Yellow Belly, you can produce Ivories - a white ball python, with ruby red eyes and a thin yellow stripe on the back. Very nice animals! They are also quite valuable in combinations - the Super Stripe being the most sought after Yellow Belly combinations I would assume. This is what we're hoping to see next year. We were hoping for it this year, but that didn't work out. That's one thing with Ball Python breeding - if it doesn't work one year, you can always try it again next year!

I'll try to update tomorrow night if I can with the results of the Espresso clutch - a bunch of normals likely :(

F3_2009 clutch laid today & F4_2009 clutch almost all out...

We brought the kids in the hatchling/incubator room today like most days, but today we brought the camera in. They really like this time of year. Every morning Caleb wants to see if there's a new clutch that was laid (he's 1.5 years old). He was very excited when we found one today. Both Caleb and Naomi got to each hold a baby from the Yellow Belly clutch. They both seem to understand that babies come out of the eggs that sit in the incubator. They love to see the babies hatch :)

For the Yellow Bellies, they are all out except two that are taking a relaxed approach to starting life lol! From what I can see, I believe that there are probably an even split of 5 Yellow Bellies and 5 Normals. I look at that carefully once they are all out. Very nice clutch, but so far I have to say, the Yellow Bellies re not as nice as their father, who is an exceptional (very visual) Yellow Belly.

So this should be our very last clutch of 2009. From what I understand and have seen, the other few females I thought may lay will not lay this year. It's quite disappointing for us that the possible het Super Stripe did not produce for us this year. Looks like a project we will have to look at for next year it seems. This F3_2009 clutch is produced by an interesting female that has a Granite look to her and is a very nice Black Back at the same time. She has produced for us in the past. Some of her babies to tend to keep her black back look and we've held back a male pastel that she produced and also a couple of female pastels as well. Some normals she's produced in the past had the same look as well. She was line-bred in the hopes that there is something interesting going on, but with little activity, we decided to breed her to the Mojave male (same story as the F14_2009 clutch laid a few days ago)... we'll have eggs hatching as late as September 21st this year - crazy!

First Yellow Belly leaves egg today...

The first to leave it's egg today was a Yellow Belly. The head markings, the sides and the edges of the belly are the traits that make it obvious which ones are normals and which ones are Yellow Bellies.


One of them is more yellow than the others and appears to be a Yellow Belly. I'm looking forward to seeing that one out of it's egg. Another day or two and we'll get to see them all :)

F4_2009 Clutch Hatched and F14_2009 Clutch just laid...

I started by finding another clutch tonight. I was expecting this female to lay soon, and I figured it would be a big clutch. However, I was surprised to see a clutch of 12 eggs! They all appear good to me, even though I did not candle them tonight (didn't have time). I will try to check them out at some point later, but I think they should be fine. This particular banded-type normal had produced for us a few years back. For the fun of it, I line bred her this year, but the male was not doing much. In the end, I paired her up with the Mojave male. I can't be 100% sure what will happen with this clutch as the line breeding may of worked - or may not of worked... Whoever is the father doesn't matter a whole lot, it looks like a healthy clutch and that's what matters most. We'll see who the father was when it hatches on September 19th :) I'm fairly confident it will be the Mojave though...


Also, clutch F4_2009 started pipping today. I cut all the eggs to avoid having any babies drown. Years ago, I had bred a few corn snakes and I remember loosing a perfectly healthy red albino corn snake (amelanistic) due to drowning. The poor thing was half tied up in a knot and could not get out of the egg. I open all the eggs up now, but I make sure to open them up only when they are ready! And that's what is most important... if you cut them too early, you can kill them if you don't know what you're doing you...

Since this is a Yellow Belly to Normal breeding, I can't be sure what the ratio is until they actually leave the eggs. This is our first time hatching Yellow Bellies. We are very confident of identifying them once they are out of the eggs as the markers are very clear. However, while still sitting in the eggs, we can't see the bellies, sides and most cases, not even the top of their heads. So we'll have a better idea what's going on in a few days once they leave the eggs...

Just for the record, the next clutch is the Espresso line breeding... 5 days from now... I fear the results won't be good... candling is showing what appears to be rather normal looking babies... we'll see soon enough...

F23_2009 Clutch Sexed

Turned out to be a perfect split for male/females on this one. 3.4 Spiders and 3.2 normals.

Males are pictured in the following (2nd picture being the surprise banded one):

Females are pictured in the following:

The following is a female also, but she's already committed to someone - Congrats JR :)

The clutch schedule is as follows for us this year (excluding 2 large females that have not laid their eggs yet):

• F23_2009 7/21/2009 [clutch above]
  
• F4_2009 7/27/2009 [hatching this coming Monday]
  
• F15_2009 7/31/2009
• F16_2009 8/2/2009
• F31_2009 8/5/2009
• F48_2009 8/12/2009
• F32_2009 8/13/2009
• F11_2009 8/15/2009
• F49_2009 8/21/2009
• F36_2009 8/24/2009
• F42_2009 8/24/2009
• F45_2009 8/25/2009
• F37_2009 8/29/2009
• F43_2009 8/30/2009
• F24_2009 8/31/2009

Thanks for reading... I'll try to post pictures of the next clutch on Monday...

Clutch F23_2009

All the babies of the first clutch are out of the egg today. Some beautiful Spiders in there. All babies are healthy, but the ratio was above average - 7 Spiders! For some reason, of the 5 normals, one came out rather banded... where does that one come from, I have no idea! Day 55 for the next clutch is on July 27th (Yellow Belly to Normal)...

Results for first clutch of 2009 are in...

Today was day 54 of the first clutch of the year, so I cut open all the eggs to avoid any of them drowning in the egg. All appear to be alive and well so far, but not ready to come out of their eggs just yet (a day or two probably). This female surprised us with a 12-egg clutch for her first clutch ever. She was approximately 2000g before she was bred. She was bred to our really nice male Spider. The results ended up being 7 Spiders and 5 Normals. This is an excellent ratio for this first clutch of the year. In theory we should of had around 6, but have had as little as 2 or 3 in similar sized clutches in the past.


The next clutch scheduled to hatch (in 6 days from now I think) is a Yellow Belly to Normal clutch. This is another large clutch and we're hoping to hatch a lot of female Yellow Bellies. We have the possibility of having, just maybe, some unproven het Super Stripes in our collection and we hope to prove them out eventually. That would require us breeding the animals we think could be het Super Stripes to Yellow Bellies. More long term projects I guess... a few Ivories would of made it easier, but that's not possible for now.


And just for the fun of it... Here's a picture of my male Super Dwarf x Dwarf Retic het Albino having lunch...

Eggs starting to hatch in only a few days now...

This is what a nice healthy clutch of Ball Python eggs should look like. This was a big 11-egg clutch. I had quite a few nice clutch this year with the average being around 9 eggs per clutch. The first clutch is due to hatch July 19th (day 52). This clutch is a Spider x Normal (Granite-ish) female. I believe it could be the clutch pictured, but since I did not pay much attention to tag the pictures, I don't know for sure... By candling, I have found at least a few Spiders in the clutch, but it almost seems like we may be low on Spiders despite the nice large clutch. We'll see in a couple of days :)


We had issues with a female laying eggs this year... this was our first time to have an egg-bound female. This happens when for some reason or another (there are multiple possible reasons), a female cannot pass or move out her eggs. In the end, we were prepared to intervene and try to help her out. However, we gave her a few days and she managed to move everything out. The problem with this particular female was that she had a slug and also a deformed, but viable, egg. The female is in good shape and ate a medium rat just tonight.



Ball Pythons make wonderful pets. We enjoy their great disposition, their perfect size (not too big, not too small) and their endless combination of color and patterns is a plus as well. This picture is of my 3-year old daughter hanging out with Floyd. He's the male of the first pair of ball pythons that we acquired back in 1999 (10 years ago). He is definitely the tamest Ball Python I have ever seen. A great looking snake, that is tame and a perfect size!

You can't win them all...

As they say, you can't win them all... This picture is one of the worst clutch we ever had laid here... 9 slugs in total, but one was a double (big one in center). That would of almost certainly resulted in 10 babies had the eggs been fertile. This was a female that produced incredible Spiders a few years ago, and we were hoping to produce some more of those really nicely reduced Spiders. We actually held back a female Spider which should be just about breedable next season. This is one of 3 clutches that had slugs in it for us this year... one was a 10-egg clutch, but we managed to get 3 good eggs out of that one.. the other clutch only had 1 slug as far as I can remember...

This is the male Orange Granite that bred with the previously posted female... they produced a nice clutch of 7 good eggs this year. It's the first time they produced for us so we're hoping to hit something interesting. It's odd how nice they looked when babies and how they've browned out. If this proves genetic, we feel that having the Hypo gene mixed into it would prove to really "light them up". Some Granites have proven to be co-dom - meaning two Granites bred together produces some kind of "Super Granite". Hopefully this is what will happen with this project... Estimated hatch date is August 24th for this clutch...

Some females lay so many eggs that they can't fit them all underneath them! This next picture is a good example of that. That's it for today...

Just a few pictures...

Even though we are big fans of Ball Pythons, and consider them basically the perfect pet snake, we have ventured into something a little different... we have acquired a pair of adult Dwarf x Super Dwarf Reticulated Pythons that are also het-albino. They did not breed for us last winter, but should be able to breed for us this coming season. A friend of ours has hatched some albino babies, and they were completely amazing (from the pictures we saw anyways). We hope to hatch some in 2010. A picture of the male is shown here.

This picture is of an interesting Pastel cross we hatched in a few years ago. It was a female and not the greatest feeder from time to time. So she is not ready just yet. Her mother on the other hand was line bred this year in the hopes of hitting something interest. This clutch should hatch at the end of this month... only a few more weeks to go before we get to see if we hatch anything interesting... From the results we are seeing via candling, it doesn't appear promising (looks rather normal so far), but we'll have to wait and see to be sure...


We also bought some very interesting Captive Hatched animals when we first got started. Some of these are now producing for us. One of those interesting projects is an Orange Granite to Orange Granite clutch. These have never produced for us, so we don't know if they are going to be genetic, but even though they have "browned out" as they got older, they were very stunning as babies. The following picture is of the male (sir of two clutches for us this year). *EDIT* Oups, that is in fact the female... picture of male to come...

So that will be it for today... we have a lot of clutches incubating right now, and we're looking forward to see what comes out of it. Some projects have been a lot of work for us, hopefully some of them will prove to be interesting...

That's it for today!

2009 Egg Laying Season

Well, things are going way better than anticipated for this year so far... this will likely be our best production year ever! We all eggs are laid other than for 3 clutches, that should be laid soon. our incubator is maxed out so hopefully those last 3 females will wait long enough for the first few clutches to hatch and make room in the incubator! Don't worry, we do have a backup plan otherwise...

So we will have approximately 150 babies this year... a lot of dinking projects are part of this year's effort, including line breeding the original Espresso female that produced the interesting Pastel cross that can be seen in the header/title of this page.

More updates and pictures to come...