Ups and downs of a 1st time breeder

[WarriorPrincess90]

Can't wait to see those little guys!! Congrats on the most recent clutch!!!

[rafacacho]

You can't post that and not put a single picture! Come on!

[treachery]

They are finally all out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[treachery]

[IMG][/IMG]

So they are all out and healthy!!!!!! Now I did make a mistake on who was what in my last post but still awesome odds for a double sired clutch. Starting at the bottom going clockwise is a lesser, bel, lesser, bel, mojave, normal, lesser bees, spider.

normal 1:0
Mojave 0:1
spider 1:0
lesser bee 0:1
lesser 1:1
BEL 1:1

[Lady mkrj58]

Congratulations on your Journey. ....

Sent from my SGH-T999

[TheSnakeEye]

Just to clarify, you're saying some of your eggs went bad because they were near other bad eggs?

[treachery]

Just to be clear, on the first page of the thread, I have three pic's of my three clutches laid this year. They are in order of when they where laid. The first pic (top of the fist page dated 8-23, with the ?'s) was of my green pastel (From Bailey's reptiles!!!! ) and my black pastel. She(green pastel) laid 8 eggs and as I candled them only 4 where fertile. I put ?'s on the ones that where infertile and since this was my first clutch ever I followed the things I read by other more experienced breeders in threads. What I was taught was to always leave the eggs how the dame laid them, also if I found them stuck together to not separate them. Well I did just that and the bad eggs started to mold and rot. I then checked other threads and was told to use anti fungal powder which in my case didn't help me at all. So upon the advise of another thread I tried to remove the bad eggs by cutting them away, which I did successfully. But then the fertile eggs started to turn brown and smell bad. I found maggots in the vermiculite on one occasion and had to change the substrate. The last pic of this particular clutch is the pic of the 4 brown eggs. All eggs where at 55 day so I went ahead and cut them which was a big mistake, in this case because out of the four, 3 where severely under developed(looked like they stopped developing around the first few weeks) As for the 4th it was alive but wayyyyyyyy premature, and due to me cutting it's egg it didn't survive but a day or two . SO I'M IN NO WAY SAYING DEFEATIVLY that they died due to me leaving the "bad" eggs with the good, BUT there is an ole saying I'm sure everyone has heard at one time or another......"ONE ROTTEN APPLE CAN SPOIL THE WHOLE BUNCH" well maybe it's also true for eggs!

Now the pics of the eight baby snakes just posted was from my second clutch and what I did different was I separated them and laid them out in the egg box(as the second pic show) and they all hatched no issues at all!!!!! Tim Bailey posted a thread on this forum(back in 2009 called the "the upside down egg experiment) the link(http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...Egg-Experiment) that talks about an experiment that he did by rotating the egg a few time during incubation and his findings where that it suffered no ill effects from this. So from now on I WILL ALWAYS SEPERATE THE EGGS!!!! It just works for me and based on Tim ground breaking test I'm confident I'm doing the right thing!!!!

[MarkS]

Nicely done. congratulations, I've been breeding ball pythons for over a decade and have never had a double sired clutch.
One thing I'd like to note about egg orientation, sometimes having them rightside up IS necessary. I've got a female that I've had many clutches from but in the early years half of her clutch would die every time. I took to candling them after they were laid and found that half of them were upside down orientation wise. I cut the clutch apart and re-oriented the upside down ones and that was the first year I had a 100% hatch rate from that female. I'm sure that a lot of the time egg orientation isn't a big deal, BUT.... sometimes it is.
The last few years I've taken to pulling apart the clutches (if it can be safetly done) candling them and laying them out embyo side up in the incubation boxes. I still lose some eggs, but I don't think it's hurting anything.

[Hetstatic]

Glad you finally got a good clutch, it was my first year too this year and it was v stressful (and fun), trying to make sure everything was done right (which it wasn't in my case) - lessons learned for next year.

lovely looking clutch defiantly got good odds. Think that is mojo-bee rather than a Lesserbee.

[treachery]

Glad you finally got a good clutch, it was my first year too this year and it was v stressful (and fun), trying to make sure everything was done right (which it wasn't in my case) - lessons learned for next year.

lovely looking clutch defiantly got good odds. Think that is mojo-bee rather than a Lesserbee.

Thanks my friend for your replies!! I'm going to have to disagree with you though on the Mojo bee I.D my camera work must just suck..lol.....the Dame is a Lesser the two sires are a spider and a Mojave....no way that both dads genes get together in a egg excluding moms altogether...may look like a Mojave bee but I assure you it's not. The Mojave gave it's genes to the BEL's. The only question is on who sired the lessers and the normal.

So with this clutch, the Mojave would only be able to produce the one Mojave I got, the two BEL's and possibly the two lessers and the normal. The spider, on the other hand, would only be able to produce the one spider I got, the lesser bee, and maybe the two lessers and the normal.

For it to be a mojo bee the moms genes would be absent and the fathers genes put together, and I'm no scientist but I don't think that's possible! But thanks again for your post and well wishes. Hope the same to you with your next season. I still got one more clutch in the incubator, due to hatch around 10/23. From this clutch I can get of course normals, but also pastels, super pastels, spiders, or bumble bees. So of course as the saga of the 1st time breeder continues I'll keep my fingers crossed that all babies come out healthy no matter what they are!!!!!