YAY! Second to Last Clutch

Well, here I was, Thanksgiving Evening, cleaning snakes... and I find this. 

This female is the second to last female to lay for me for the season. She is a proven Het Pied female bred to a Pied male. I am pretty excited about this, considering I need a few more Pied things to take hold over here. Plus hatching Pieds are always fun!

And of course, since I have family in town, it was that much more exciting to share this experience. And wait for said family to take a million pictures of the event.

And piss off the mother more so than usual...

But eventually, we got the photos taken and the eggs put in a box.

Seven good ones, my friends! I can't wait to see what pops out!

Here's to New Years Babies!

Have a great holiday weekend, my friends!

Clutches 12 and 13

Egg Butt Puff realized, my friends. This is the female that had the puff a few days ago. She finally laid her eggs, and she didn't let me down, other than pushing her paper away from the bottom of the tub and pissing all over the place...

This female is a Het Pied female that I bred with my Pied male to get a few more pieds under my belt. Last year she gave me six eggs, this year seven! YAY for eggs!

They are nice and big and well veined, so here's to lots of Pieds in two months, my friends.

And later on that evening, I was doing my deep clean... I went thru and cleaned all the tubs, including a tub of a Mojave that was suspiciously underneath her hide (which I only provided due to the fact that she was a crappy eater without it). I moved it away when I saw her look like she was coiled around something...

And she was.

This gal was bred to a Mystic primarily, but also my Spotnose het VPI Axanthic male as well. We shall see what took, but there were only four large eggs in this clutch. I kinda hope for the Spot to be the father on this one...

We will see. These eggs are large enough to maybe house twins? Wishful thinking, but hey, I said it here, and if it actually happens... WOOHOOO!!!

So other than cleaning and dusting some of the racks, that is pretty much all I did this weekend. And study...

Yeah.

Can't wait to be done with that....

Anyway, to all of the Veterans out there, thank you so much for your service and dedication to our country. Let us remember the Fallen with respect and honor. Happy Memorial Day, my friends.

Wait, What???

You know how I mentioned there were Pieds in one of the clutches that is hatching out right now?

Well, I was right... But I didn't expect this!

Two out of the five eggs that were still good out of the clutch had pieds in them. One of them that has a Pied in it has yet to pip, but the other egg had been ready to pip out for a while. 

This egg had been the first one I cut, and I left it alone. Saw white, moved on...

But now that this one pipped, something was different. 

There was one yolk, but two babies!

This is my second clutch with twins EVER, and the second clutch with twins that are genetically Pied.

Here are the two het pied gals from last year that hatched out.

How WIERD!?!?! Same father and everything, but different mothers.

I thought this was really interesting because when I pulled these guys out, one was still in the egg, and the other was out. So I removed both of them, and this is what I saw...

They were still connected!!!

Obviously, this is how they developed, sharing a yolk and not an umbilicus. I have never seen this before, and I am so intrigued!!! I am glad I got a chance to take a picture before they disconnected from each other.

These guys are both boys, and they are small... runts obviously, but they will be great males when they get bigger and more established. I'm excited to work with them!

So there is one more (I think) Pied in the clutch that is due to hatch out, and three more het Pieds. 

So far we have 2.0 Pieds, 3.2 Het Pieds.

WOOHOOO!

Have a great day, my friends.

WOW!

I absolutely loved the feedback I got over the weekend in regards to the post about the Industry.

I really do appreciate all e-mails and messages I get in regards to the blog...

So I will try and get more hot topics on the blog. Everyone has their opinions, and I want to hear what you think about things too!

And to top it all off, my friends, the last two clutches of the 2010 season are hatching as we speak!

This clutch is Pied to poss het, and she did not prove. Two out of the five are pipping, as well as when I cut them earlier, I knew they were all hets, and no pieds... That's alright!

 Aren't they just too cute??

This clutch is the other Pied to poss het clutch, which DID prove out, as you cannot see in this photo, but let me let you in on a little secret... That one egg that is cut was the only one I cut in that clutch. In there, in that one cut egg, is a Pied. So I didn't cut any others...

Why not? Well, you can clearly see that there are a few bad eggs in the clutch, so I didn't want to expose any other embryos to contamination, although it is more than likely fine, I just didn't feel the need to do it.

So lets wait for another few days, and see what we have popping out of 2010, shall we?

I can't wait!

Have a fantastic day, my friends!!!

And Now, I'm Spent

This is officially the last clutch of the season.

And it is not super awesome, but not super sucky, like I had expected. 

I felt slugs. I got slugs. 

But I got more "eggs" than I thought. I had palpated seven, and I got nine. 

Granted, only five of them are viable (aka with veins), but its all good. This gal can lay!

Can't be mad at that.

Pied male to my second Possible Het Pied female (sister to the other one who laid the day before).

The boob eggs are slugs, and the obvious slug (on the bottom) is a slug, but there are good eggs in there!

How can I tell which are good and which aren't, you ask?

Well, it's called Candling.

Candling is when you put a flashlight to the egg and look for veins. The eggs without veins are not viable, aka slugs. 

So there you go. I will see if I can get Joel to help me get some photos of candling for the blog, as well as a few other photos. 

I've finished updating the available page, with photos!!

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Have a fantastic day, my friends.

Well, I didn't expect this..

Clutch second to last has been laid... I honestly think we are at 33? I'm not really sure. It's been so long since the last clutches were laid, I stopped paying attention.

This is one of the Poss Het Pied females that I have yet had the chance to prove out. I believe that this girls clutch went bad last year.

And her boyfriend... in a not so good photo.

So these babies will be at least 100% het Pieds. Can't be mad at that!

I'm hoping for actual Pieds.

Fingers crossed!

Six eggs for the win!

These guys will be Christmas babies! Should be fun!

So I actually have one more clutch to be laid, and a bunch of new pictures to share.

Have a fantastic day, my friends.

No Snow in California again

Well...

I did it.

I cut the eggs.

And unfortunately for me, I did not see anything white.

I only saw Grey and Black.

Which is fine, really, I am glad to have some more Axanthics, but as you well know, I was hoping for a Snow.

Which just goes to show you that it doesn't always work out the way you want.

But hey, this is just the beginning of the season for me, so we are trudging along and doing fine!

Speaking of the beginning of the season, here are the first post shed shots of the Pastel het Pieds.

All four girls...

All have fantastic het Pied markers, and all are subtle ringers as well.

Gotta love it.

 And the Het Pied siblings... this is the pair of them.

They look comfortable in their balls.

And more Het Pieds from the Pied to poss het Clutch. She didn't prove, but there are 2.2 Het Pieds to show for it.

Can't complain about that, eh?

And here we are at Clutch 24, with both Big Apple Herp incubators almost full... (One is full, the other has one tub space left. I need to plug in the extra one)

And again, it's Pieds. I love Pieds. Apparently, that also a lot of my recessive work is Pieds this year. Hmph.

Here is a first time Momma, old enough, but small. She is an unproven 100% het Pied female.
I decided to give her a go a few rounds with the Pied. Apparently, a few rounds is all he needed.

Only three eggs, and she was only 1200 grams or so before laying, so I can't be too upset about it. And I'm not! I'm surprised and glad she laid at all!

So there we are. Clutch 24, my friends.... Lets hope for some Pieds in them there three eggs.

And on we go, forward to the next clutch hatching, or the next clutch laid.

It's gunna be a fun ride!

Have a fantastic day, my friends.

BABIES!!!

Well, the babies are still coming, and only clutch one is completely out and ready to show, but I took pictures of the second clutch, the Het Pied clutch, just for the hell of it.

Here is the Pastel het Pied clutch, with only one Het Pied actually shed out. I was hoping for a few more to have shed yet, but to no avail.

I can't wait to show them to you all, as they have KILLER markers for Pied, and that will actually be, once they have shed out, a topic I will go into detail about.

Since everything I have out that is '10 is Het Pied, I thought that may be an appropriate topic of conversation.

One more of the Hets is out of the egg, but its umbilical cord is sticking out a bit, so I'm leaving it in the incubator until it absorbs it.

Yes, this is fine to do, as long as the snake gets air.

The last one in the egg hasn't even pipped yet, but I know its alive as of right now. I poked at it, and it moved. Can't wait to see you, little buddy!

So again, waiting on this weekend, where I am guessing and hoping that the TSK Snow clutch will have hatched by then. I need to see some white heads. Really... That is a project that although I didn't intentionally get into, I want to complete now.

What do you mean, Heather?

Well, here's the story...

Back in the day, I bought a female Albino from this guy. He was selling off everything, and he had mentioned to me that he got it directly from TSK, and that it was possible het for TSK Axanthic. I was like, Oh, that's nice...

And went on my merry way.

THEN, an opportunity arose for me to get a female Axanthic, and this guy, although a different person, also got his from TSK. And apparently, she was also possible het for Albino. Her percentage was lower (I think its supposedly 33%?) but I was interested, and picked her up as well.

Then the time came for me to find a male. I didn't want to buy a visual Snow (because the cost was staggering), so I hunted down a TSK Axanthic het Albino male from, you guessed it, TSK.

So I completed my trio, and thusly, completed my Snow project.

Last year, the Albino proved to be Het Axanthic, but she never recovered her weight back for this year.

This year, its the Axanthic's turn.

Lets see if we can get our luck on the right path.

Fingers crossed.

Have a fantastic day, my friends.