Learning to take the bad with the good.

[angllady2]

So my long anticipated Fire clutch is hatching out. The first two babies out were fire's, and I was pretty darn excited. Well, as of last night I am up to 7 babies out. And have discovered that I didn't escape the effects of the brief temperature spike I had entirely.

About 3 weeks before the clutches were supposed to start pipping, my incubator had a temp spike, and I found it at 120 degrees. Naturally I unplugged it right away, opened the door and the egg tubs to drop the temps as fast as possible. Once it had stabilized at normal incubation temps, I hooked it back up and began my vigil. Every 15 minutes for 12 straight hours I checked that thing. Whatever went wrong must have fixed itself when I unplugged it, because it's never wavered since.

When my first clutch of 6 hatched out fine, I was sure I had dodged the bullet. Then when the first three babies of the fire clutch were fine, I was finally relaxed. Then when the next group started pipping, I noticed one baby was eyeless, like my Athena. So much for dodging the bullet. Now today while photographing the 4 new babies to emerge, I discovered that while three of them have an insane black back thing going on, one of them only has one eye. There are still three eggs to go, so time will tell if there are any more problems.

Now I know I have a right to be upset and dissapointed, but truthfully if all that happens is a couple of the babies have minor problems like this, I will consider myself extremely fortunate. I know that things could have been much worse. I could have lost all of the babies. They could have been kinked or deformed to the point they could not survive, or worse I might have had to put them down myself.

So all things considered, I will take this tiny amount of bad with my massive amount of good, and be content. And now, the pictures of the babies I know you all want to see.

Baby #1 a beautiful fire




Baby #2 is also a fire, but it's pictures came out blurry, have to get more later.

Baby # 3 normal


Baby #4 a normal with a black back



Baby #5 another black back


Baby #6 the eyeless fire. Prettiest baby out so far



Baby #7 ridiculous black back. This one only has one eye.




Gale