This is my LAST NON-Update for a while!
Okay, progress on this year's clutches...
Clutch #4 babies have hatched already, I haven't fed them yet (they're very fat) they should be shedding soon. That clutch yielded 3 beautiful babies!
Clutches #5 and #6 were laid sometime between the early hours of May 28 and the evening of the 30th. We were away, so it is hard to say when they were laid. I tend to believe that Clutch #5 was laid shortly after we departed on vacation, and #6 was laid shortly before we returned. This would put one clutch at day 61 and one at day 59. My last clutch of kings hatched on day 62 and I expect the rest of my kings to hatch between days 60 and 62. THIS means that I'm predicting my clutch #5 will hatch before 24 hours are up.
I got a new spiffy penlight so I went ahead and candled some of the eggs, and saw great veins.
Here's a picture of the clutch I am predicting will start pipping in the next 24 hours:
In this picture you can see the dark raisin-like lumps that were the two eggs that went bad. I didn't want to try to separate them from the clump, so I covered them with vermiculite, and it turned out to be a very good plan, as I didn't have to watch them decompose and the surrounding eggs were not effected. The eggs are all deflating, but the container is plenty humid. I looked at them and saw beautiful veins on all 14 eggs. This clutch will be an interesting one.... the papa is Jester, who is a beautiful desert phase aberrant, and the mama is a desert phase banded. Chances are that most the babies will just be banded, but they should be very WHITE. Both parent snakes have NO yellowing of their bands. I HAD planned on crossing my high white with this female, but hubby started the snake breeding this year without regards to my plans. But my two males are both clutch mates so I am thinking it's not that big of a deal! Last year I bred this female to my high white, and her first clutch died and her second clutch was laid while she was AWOL. These eggs look great and I'm VERY excited to see how they look. All the babies from this clutch that are normal banded will be given away $free$
Clutch #6 is looking very good also. One of the eggs has a funny bulge on the side, but all of the eggs have very strong veins, and I'm so looking forward to these eggs. The father snake, my high white cal king, is supposed to be a possible het for albino. Since the momma snake is albino, I should get three or four albinos if the papa is albino. She's aberrant banded. I actually bought her mostly to cross to my jurassic milk, but he was just a little too little to do the job this year. Next year maybe. And if it is too much work (they don't like each other) then I'll put her to my other male cal king to see if he is het for albino. These were laid while we were gone and should hatch within 48 hours of the previous clutch.
Clutch #7 has given me some trouble, as I've mentioned. The seven eggs were absolutely enormous when laid. They started to sweat at day 50 and I opened up the sweating eggs, posted pictures of one. I found the same results in all five of the sweating eggs. Perished babies who were perhaps at day 40 or so of incubation. (I don't know the development stages of a snake embryo, does anyone know this?). The first one I opened up loooked like the baby had a faint pattern developing ... banded. The other four had interesting patterns. Another banded or two, one looked like it was a "50-50" with wide white bands and thin black bands. Another looked like a classic stripe. That's all I remember, but of course they all died, so it's rather immaterial. I just got done candling the two remaining eggs pictured below and they still have a strong network of veins so I am hoping they will at least produce a couple of viable babies. This snake laid a second clutch with 7 eggs and one slug, making a total of 15 eggs. The new eggs look MUCH better and I caught them within approximately 6 hours of being laid. If they hatch, they should hatch in 4 to 6 days.
Clutch #8 is my last planned clutch of eggs, and this is Queenie by Jester. She's produced beautiful babies the last two years in a row. What is interesting about her two years of breeding before this one is that she was bred to my high white both years. The first year she produced a lot of babies that had a LOT of white. The second year she produced a lot of babies that had not very much white. So it's anyone's guess if the babies will look like the parents (both with a lot of black) or if they will have some high whites since it is in both animals' lineage. She laid 11 eggs and the last I checked, they are doing great. Those eggs are due in 5 to 7 days from today.
So basically ALL my babies are due to hatch in the next week or so, which is VERY exciting. I am so looking forward to this onrush of babies.
Other than kingsnakes my luck has been lousy.... three corn clutches, and I've gotten ONE perfect baby, and 11 kinked babies, and a large number of dead-in-egg babies. Had one cornsnake baby crawl out of it's egg last night, and immediately expire! WHY are cornsnakes harder than kingsnakes?
Anyway thanks for listening to my pain-killer-induced ramblings. I expect to be adding a LOT more to this thread over the next week, but thought everyone deserved one more non-update before the real stuff starts to fly!