Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After 55 days of maternal incubation the Sri Lanka eggs began hatching. The females intra-coil temperature held very consistent at 92 F plus or minus about half a degree. This was with an internal cage temp of 85 to 86 F and an ambient humidity of 90%. Her contractions typically ranged from 6 to 12 per minute with an average of about 8. Not a good fertility ratio, as only 9 out of 21 eggs were fertile, however all fertile eggs did produce hatchlings. They have the typical defensive attitude, although not quite as aggressive as most of the burmese hatchlings I produced years ago. However, they have much better coloration than any burmese hatchlings I have ever seen. Below are photos of the first young out and of them hatching. Thanks,

Kelly

Outstanding! Congrats Kelly. Those are beautiful! Hope we run into each other soon. KC maybe? Take care!

Jeremy

definitely look for you at the KC show in a couple of weeks.

Kelly

do you live in florida?

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boo...well let us know if you get any pimbura hybrids.

Nice, Kelly!

I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the info you usually post like you did here. Very informative & interesting.

Was this the female or male's first breeding, thus the reason for low fertility rate?

Hatchling aggressiveness is something I've not paid much attention to. As you may remember I've only bred once (hatched in June). Out of 30 eggs and several goofs I had 5 hatch and only one was a striking machine (and that it was), but it calmed down within minutes. The other 4 were as calm as could be. All are still doing good and very docile, handleable.

One other Q: Do you use any kind of humidifying system to help maintain humidity?

Thanks!

Take care!
Mike
(HH)
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

this was her first clutch. Not sure of the reason behind the low fertility. I have had numerous pythons in the past do very well on their first breeding, actually many more so than did not do well. There were just a couple of slugs, and both the fertile and infertile eggs were well shelled, so this would tend to point to a fecundity issue with the male. I had a tough time cooling them down last winter and early spring here as it was much warmer than usual and the background temp of the room was not as cool as I would have liked. This could have produced a low sperm count in the male, but that is pure speculation on my part.

On the humidity question, I attached a photo below on the setup I have been using for almost 30 years for maternal incubation and it has always worked very well. The combination of the nest box lined with damp sphagnum, and the water containers with towel wicks does great at keeping an elevated humidity level. After the females lays, I partition off the cage to give the smallest cage volume possible to humidify. This setup will easily maintain the humidity at around 85% to 90% continuously.

Kelly

Thank you, Kelly - N/P
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American

Congratulations Kelly!!! They look awesome.

One question, what was the hatch weight of the babies? I know the Sri Lankins are a smaller species than the burm and was wondering if the birth weight reflected that.

We talked in May when we hatched our 1/2 dwarf het albino granite babies and you gave us some good info on weights then. To update you, the babies averaged 100 grams at hatch and now they are all about 200 grams so they have double their weight in about 3 1/2 months. They have all been eating very well since the beginning, but it took a couple of months for them to really start putting on the weight.

Good luck with the hatchlings and keep us posted.
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Randy and Michelle
Art In Scales
(719) 439-4199
info@artinscales.com

Sweet, the Dame of my sri-lankan has laid and hatched 29 babies.
i went to see them last week end,
and i get first refusal, yeah!!!

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20 years in the hobbie/business.
in my personal collection at present;
1:2 p.m.molurus
1:4 chondro python viridis
1:1 dasypeltis medici
had to cutt down as i've moved back in with parent's