Finally after 9 years.....HATCHLINGS!

[SeanL]

I started collecting snakes about 10 years ago, and got my first ball python 9 years ago. I actually joined this forum 8 years ago and my addiction started! When I got my first Mojave, my goal in life was to create a Blue Eyed Lucy...they were my favorite back then, and still my favorite now. Even though they are fairly affordable now, I told myself I would never buy one, and one of these days I would create one. As my collection grew of many different kinds of snakes (ball pythons, red tails, GTP, etc) my desire to breed got even stronger. I bought many females a long time ago, but the 3 year wait began. In that time I bred my Hogg Island Boa, but shortly after that, my life got super busy and I had to take a break from snakes. I eventually reduced my collection of 36 snakes down to 12, keeping some of my favorite females, knowing that one day, I'll have some time again.

Flash forward to 3 years ago when I met my significant other, Elizabeth, and found out she had a love of these amazing animals as well. At this point the females I had were a Butter, Pastel and 2 het. Axanthic poss het Albino (the snow project being my other must have). I eventually got Elizabeth a male Pastel Lesser (we call him Lester) for her birthday, and we found an adult female spider (Charlotte) at a show. We immediately started pairing Lester with all the females minus the snow project. I eventually was able to get my hands on an Axanthic het Albino male and he went with those girls.

For a whole season Lester was locking with the spider and pastel, but not the butter (the only one I wanted him to!!!). But after MANY locks, nothing came. We pulled him for a few months, and then started pairing him again early October 2017. He finally got jiggy with it with Butters! But through the spring, no ovulation. Through the early Summer, no ovulation. We had just about given up, until one day we pulled out all 3 females and they were HUGE! For sure Charlotte and Butters were close to lay...looked like they were going to have the biggest poop ever, but they hadn't been eating. The Pastel definitely just ovulated. Now the rush to get an incubator was ON!

Since this was my first clutch, I didn't want to build anything and screw things up, so I went the cheap and easy route and got a Hovabator. I assumed a lay date, but unfortunately I was out of town that whole week and it was up to Elizabeth to set up the incubator the moment it got to our door and get ready. The incubator gets here and on my flight back, butters starts laying! I quickly rush home and by the time I get back she was finished. I was so nervous even just touching the eggs. Over the years I have watched so many videos, read so many threads, but when you finally have your own clutch, it's almost like you immediately forget what you learned. I safely got the clutch into the egg box and into the bator. I decided to look in Charlotte's cage (which has a hide) and saw a skinny flap of skin poke out. I was like....that's not normal for a snake full of eggs! I pulled off the hide and saw that she had laid too! We missed it! I'm assuming by a few days. I got that clutch into another egg box and into the bator right away.

We knew the Pastel was about a month away from laying at this point, but the crazy wait for our first clutches started. What's crazy is even though you think you have researched the heck out of everything for 8 years, experience is everything. I half messed up the humidity in the bator, and that combined with the fact that Charlotte probably laid a few days before we realized, we lost 3 eggs due to them being sunken in =(. But all of Butters were good.

At this same time we were pairing the Axanthic boy to the possibly het snow females and low and behold, one of the females was gravid as well. H. O. L. Y. Crap. 4 out of 5 females for my first ever breeding season. We ordered another bator, and the het snow laid before the pastel.

We eventually cut the eggs at day 55. The only reason I decided to cut was because I knew I had the humidity issue early on and Charlotte's clutch had decently hard shells. Just yesterday all of Butters clutched hatched and the odds gods were kind. For 8 years I wanted a Lucy. For 8 years I wanted to produce one. For 8 years I had to see the world produce more and more, and finally for the first time ever, I had 3!

We had written out what we thought we were going to get a month in and I was close! (Photo of my guess is below) Out of butters clutch we got 3 Lucys (possibly Pastel), 1 Pastel Butter, 1 Pastel Lesser, 1 Butter and 2 Pastels. My list is in the photos below.

Charlotte's clutch is just hatching now and looks like we got 1 Queen Bee, 1 Bumble Bee and 2 pastels, but won't be sure until they all come out.

Hope you enjoyed my story and now the photos =) (Just with my poor camera phone, hope to do an actual photo shoot once they all shed)














The pastels have a crazy nice head blushing (can see it in the night photo, compared to the day photo)


I will update once my anticipated Snow clutch starts to hatch! We have a month left for the Snow and Pastel clutch.