Deformed Aberrant Tangerine(?) Neonate

Hey guys,

So a few months back I bought a potentially gravid 8yr old tangerine Honduran from a local expo. The breeder said he was moving onto other projects and that he had put her with what looked like a snow (I can't recall the actual terms he used).

Within the first day of getting her home I realized she was having significant respiratory troubles. I took her to the vet and they gave me injectable Fortaz. I later found out she was gravid - she laid 7 perfect eggs no problem. 5 of those eggs turned out to be slugs, one we weren't sure about, and one we knew was living.

Today was day 67 of incubation. Concerned that it was taking longer then what commonly seems to be the case I decided to cut the eggs to see what we had. The first never developed anything. What was in the second was a gorgeous, but severely deformed (hypo?) tangerine-looking neonate.

It's head was misshapen, it was fused to itself in multiple places, and it had many, many kinks in its spine. I'm fairly new to milks and this was my first hatching experience, so my question to you guys is what went wrong? Was it stress, the antibiotics, maybe temperature and humidity fluctuations during incubation, or was it genetics? I haven't been able to find anything on tangerine x snow crosses - is that a combo that just isn't done?

Here are some pictures of the little guy:















Thanks for looking guys, I'm totally thrilled that something happened with this clutch but really bummed I lost this guy.

I don't really know what could have happened. The same thing happened to me this year with a Cal king. It was the first time I've had it happen and the poor thing was alive and gasping for air when I pulled it out. It was in the perfect looking clutch of 6 eggs. Out of all my clutches, this clutch had the thickest tightest and whitest eggs. All the other babies hatched out fine, so who knows what the problem was. Some believe it can be due to something the egg was lacking in incubation, and some also believe it just happens to the best of them and there's nothing you can do about it. Both of my kings were wild caught, so its not like they were inbred for multiple generations. Anyway, I guess we all have to go through it, but I hope its a long time before I see one again. Here's the one I'm talking about.