Our hypo laid 6 eggs today.  She was bred to a pastel possible het. hypo at the beginning of the season, and then to our enchi for the last bit of the season.  Gotta say, I'm hoping for a male enchi het. hypo out of this clutch.  You can see the details here.

Finally got some new pictures of the '09 hatchlings!  Sucks that we only got one clutch last year, but at least all three were girls.

First is the pastel.

This is the 'normal' normal from the clutch.

And last but not least, probably my favorite from the clutch.  This is the girl that seems to get more orange every time she sheds.

Thought I'd post some updated pictures of our single clutch of hatchlings from the 2009 season.

Just out of the egg.

Now, after having shed twice.

It's pretty interesting to see how these three are maturing color wise.  The girl in the middle has been getting more orange with every shed.

On another note, just finished up another 41qt rack today.  I'm really liking the last one I built as far as the larger footprint for the snakes to live in, and it might just be my imagination, but it seems as if they've actually been growing faster in the two months they've been in there.  I built the new rack out of pre-cut melamine shelving to attempt to cut down on build time.  It was quite a bit quicker, basically just had to make a couple of cuts and then screw everything together.  Man is it HEAVY though!  Not satisfied with that part of it.  Back to the drawing board for the next 41qt rack I build.

Just about finished relocating everyone after building the 41 qt rack.  That one is all filled up with our smaller short-tailed pythons, the rainbow boas, the adult corn snake, and our 5 biggest ball python girls.  Just have to move a few juvies from the hatchling rack over to the 28 qt rack and I should have enough room to house all the possible hatchlings we may still get this year.

These are just a couple of locks from the past couple months or so that never got posted.  The first is our wild caught girl, who threw some really bright normals last year, locked up with our pastel.

This is the first lock I've actually observed from our lesser.  Apparently this girl being in shed was enough to get him going.

(more...)

 We finally have our first eggs of the season.  These came from our pastel 66% het. hypo bred to a light colored normal girl we picked up from Heather Wong last year.  Not the best results I could have hoped for, but hopefully we'll have a few more clutches to be laid still this year.

Just a quick update, this thing has been getting overrun with legislation news lately.  Time for some snake news!  It's looking like this is going to be the first girl of ours to go this year.  She should be ovulating in the next few weeks.  I usually end up missing the ovulations anyway though, so we'll have to see if I can catch her.

Also, I threw the pastel male that was bred to her into the tub with her for a quick shot.  We're hoping that she'll help brighten up the pastel gene a little bit.

 This pastel is a freakin' PIMP!  It's only been two hours since I threw him in the tub with this girl and he's already got her locked down.  This girl is looking pretty dark right now as she's getting close to another shed, but she is GORGEOUS right after she sheds.  She almost looks like a pastel, so we're really hoping that she'll throw some nice, bright, clean pastels.

This will most likely be the last pairing for a while.  We've got a few more planned, just waiting until the girls put on a bit more weight.  Number one on the list is our het clown pairing from last year that we struck out on.  The female is at 1400 grams right now, so we're looking at pairing them up around February or so -- which should put her right around 1500-1600 grams.

We've also got our female spider up to weight, just waiting for our little lesser and enchi boys to hit puberty and figure out what to do with her.  Another girl we're holding back for those two is our wild caught girl that gave us our possible het pieds last year.  She's just under 1700 grams right now, so by the time those guys are ready she should be able to lay a nice sized clutch for us.

First lock of the season! I've finally discovered something that Michigan winters are good for -- ball python breeding! Just put them together last night and they were already locked up this morning when I checked on them before work. This pairing is a male pastel to a female hypo, but there's a catch -- this pastel is a 66% possible heterozygous hypo. Keep your fingers crossed!