Tuesday morning while I was pulling all of the water dishes in the Ball python cages I was greeted by a beautiful site. My favorite Female Pastel was tightly wound around what looked like a pretty large clutch of eggs. I bred her this year to my Graziani line Cinnamon Pastel hopping to hatch out some Pewter’s so I was eagerly waiting for this clutch. Here is a picture of her around the eggs.
I love this next shot. They always look so intense when they are guarding their eggs.
After I unwrapped her I was pleasantly surprised to find ten perfect eggs.
After weighing the eggs (They weighed 970 grams) I set them up in the shoebox with the Perlite I use as an incubation medium. Here are the eggs right before I put them in the incubator
When I started cooling her down in October she weighed 1725 grams. She never stopped eating through the cooling so I fed her as much as she would eat. She is a mouse eater but she would eat three mice every four days so she really put on the weight. When she finally stopped eating she was 2200 grams. Well so much for the so-called rule that mouse eaters don’t grow or produce as well as Rat eaters. LOL I weighed her after she had laid the eggs and she is 1475 grams. This year she won’t have to put on as much weight to be back to breeding size as she did last year.
Here is a picture of one of the breedings that produced this clutch.
As you I am sure you can tell I am really excited about this clutch. With this many eggs I am hopping my odds will be a little bit better in producing some Pewter’s.
Wish me luck,
Albey
. Good luck with em Albey. That pic of them breeding almost looks like a pair of copperheads LOL.