hhmoore
tired & cranky shadow
Last fall, I had the opportunity to acquire an adult female het patternless bull, which I obviously took. She arrived in good condition, ate well in quarantine, and subsequently went to the basement for brumation a few weeks later than my others. I left her down for a week after I brought the rest of the crew upstairs, but she picked right up with feeding.
I waited anxiously for her first shed, and kept a male patternless aside for her. That shed FINALLY came, she was fed, then a week later I introduced the male. 3 days later, she refused food - weird...she's normally a bottomless pit. The next night (last night), I pulled open the tub, and was surprised to find 7 large slugs, with one or two more still to come. (half of them looked like they wanted to be real eggs - mostly white and full looking - but they all had hard yellow sections, and none really offered much hope of being viable.
I've never intentionally double clutched any of my colubrids - largely because of my perception of the toll on the females, but also because I just don't want or need to produce the extra babies...but I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE PATTERNLESS BABIES!!!!! Guess I'll have to give it a whirl this year, see how it goes (since I've never done it, any tips on reintroduction, timing, etc will be appreciated...my plan is to just feed her up, and put a male in with her after her next shed)
On the brighter side, I've got a small clutch of ghost bull eggs from a pair of first timers, the hypo is in her prelay shed (hypo sire), and things seem to be progressing well with the other girls; so there should still be some nice babies this summer.
<grumbles some more about damn het patternless girl dropping slugs JUST to thwart my plans>
I waited anxiously for her first shed, and kept a male patternless aside for her. That shed FINALLY came, she was fed, then a week later I introduced the male. 3 days later, she refused food - weird...she's normally a bottomless pit. The next night (last night), I pulled open the tub, and was surprised to find 7 large slugs, with one or two more still to come. (half of them looked like they wanted to be real eggs - mostly white and full looking - but they all had hard yellow sections, and none really offered much hope of being viable.
I've never intentionally double clutched any of my colubrids - largely because of my perception of the toll on the females, but also because I just don't want or need to produce the extra babies...but I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE PATTERNLESS BABIES!!!!! Guess I'll have to give it a whirl this year, see how it goes (since I've never done it, any tips on reintroduction, timing, etc will be appreciated...my plan is to just feed her up, and put a male in with her after her next shed)
On the brighter side, I've got a small clutch of ghost bull eggs from a pair of first timers, the hypo is in her prelay shed (hypo sire), and things seem to be progressing well with the other girls; so there should still be some nice babies this summer.
<grumbles some more about damn het patternless girl dropping slugs JUST to thwart my plans>