As some of you may know, a little over a month ago, my yellow rat snake eggs hatched with less than stellar results. Six hatched out of eleven and all but two of those had some level of spinal bumps. One of them, I was not sure was going to even survive as he had some kinking that made it hard for him move. I decided to give him a fighting chance though. First, let me say that the low hatch ratio I believe to be due to the fact the incubator took a pretty hard shot when I dropped a hand saw on it late in the incubation term. All eleven eggs got knocked around and like an idiot, I never marked the tops of the eggs, so I had to guess when I put them back. I suspect they all drowned as all the eggs I opened had full term, gorgeous babies.....lesson learned. As far as the bumps go, not sure what caused that, whether it was genetic or due to the trauma. In any case, all six babies are doing great and are eating on their own. The kinked one has actually straightened out and now looks mostly normal. He is also the one that has the extra large head. The pics below are the lightest one from the litter as well as the big headed one. Sorry about the crappy pics - little buggers are tough to photograph!
Billy
