Great news everyone! Feast your eyes on a hatching Western Kentucky Pine Snake! This baby is the result of pairing the Calloway County Pine Snake that Phil and I have with the Lyon County male that is owned by Gary Johnson, making these babies locality specific Western KY Pines!! This past spring our girl spent a couple of weeks over at The Johnson Snake Ranch! Gary was able to get his male to combat with another male and witnessed copulation shortly afterward. The girl then came back to my house and laid six eggs, which began to hatch after 57 days of incubation. Today is a very monumental moment for all of us and these babies will be the founders of future generations of Kentucky Pine Snakes, whose populations are under constant pressure and continue to decline throughout their range even here in Kentucky, where we are beginning to fear that the eastern population is now lost.
I have hatched over 300 snakes this year and thousands over the past several years, but these are very different from the others. There is no doubt that this hatch event is a major step in the conservation of this snake in Kentcuky and we may not even know exactly how this group of snakes will impact the well-being of the remaining population. Once established and breeding we will disperse future babies to educational facilities across the State to raise awareness and who knows what else may follow...you just never can tell! Will
