First off, I'm in complete shock over this. This is about a clutch of 5 South American Tri-Color Hognose eggs that were laid all the way back on December 18. I was really anticipating them to hatch by mid-February and around that time, the eggs even started to dimple which caused me to believe they were ready to hatch. But after a week, nothing happened, so I carefully made a small incision into one of the eggs to see what was going on inside. Upon inspection, there was nothing but yolk. So, I kind of figured at that point that the eggs were either infertile or something else, but I would have thought that after 2 months, there were have been at least a partially developed baby. However, the eggs appeared every bit as healthy and white despite having started to cave in. So, I remoistened the vermiculite they were in and decided to just let them sit until they went bad. What did I have to lose at that point? I pretty much checked on the eggs every other day or so, but when I checked on them tonight, I only saw one egg on top of the vermiculite. All the other eggs were almost completely buried. This stumped me as I know I had not covered them like that and the last thing I really expected were any hatchlings. The first buried egg I pulled out of the vermiculite was empty, so I excitedly looked underneath the container and there was a little baby buried all the way at the bottom. So, after 3 long months, I finally received vindication for my patient waiting...



The little guy only weighs in at 4 grams, but appears healthy and alert. Hopefully after a week or two, I can get it to eat. This is my first year of actually producing a South American Hognose. Last year we suffered a tragic loss when our original female laid some dud eggs and then mysteriously died a few months later. We thought that perhaps the male we bred her to was infertile since all of those eggs were infertile, but I decided to try him again with a different female this year. This is the first year that the mother of these eggs was bred. So far so good. I even have a second clutch she laid for me last month incubating. So, if all goes well, we'll have quite a few babies by this summer!

By the way, this clutch is a genetic experiment to try and prove out whether the genetics of both parents are inheritable since both parents are completely Bi-Color (only black and white). From what I've been told, all babies from Bi-Color parents start out as Tri-Colors but lose most, if not all their red after a few sheds. It will be interesting to see if this actually happens as the few people that told me this were not entirely sure what the long term outcome of all hatchlings were. I imagine they probably sold them before really seeing any developmental changes in coloration.
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

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