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wacky or unusual babies are not that rare, but they often die because of some internal or incubation problem, which is often the cause of the "wackiness" whether it be pattern, color, size, or the spine on the outside of the body...
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles

Hi Robyn....
Don't think I'm being disrespectful, but it has been claimed by Kev, that incubation has no effect as far as "wackiness" in a BP's appearance. I, too, thought this would be the case, but after reading his posts, never gave it much thought. Of course, "wackiness" is all in the eye of the beholder, in my opinion, unless it's proven genetic (of course)!!

BTW, that Hypo White Lipped is/was TOTALLY impressive, it kept me awake for days......ERIC

The incubation process does matter, for example banded balls are caused by heating the eggs to 87- 90 degrees. The heating causes anomalies in the embryos.
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Some famous last words:
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Some proverbs:
"He who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
"Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it."
And one law of life:
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious."

Everyone of my clutches are hatched between 89-90F and I don't produce any bandeds or wacky ones!!! ERIC

What temperature do you normally incubate at if not in 87 - 90 deg F? Are you saying that 87 is high or are you saying incubating at 90 as opposed to incubating at 87?

I would expect temperature extremes to have some effect on appearance some of the time. I hatched some odd babies last year including a classic jungle and thought it might have been due to low incubation temp or fluctuation.

I also once loaned an anerythristic corn egg to a non snake friend to hatch for his son and based on the time it took he must have had it rather cold. The baby was unusually dark (much more so than the siblings I incubated) and reminded me of the melanistic ball pythons I’ve seen pictures of.

However, I also have a banded mother that has produced some banded offspring consistently so I think that banded, at least in some cases, is genetic.

i didn't go into a lot of detail on incubation, and i don't know of ayn positive "tricks", they are more so negative mistakes.

LOTS of stuff can go wrong with incubation. temps, hydration, cutting the eggs too early, you can do many things to the egg to jeopardize the health of the snake, and a number of things can screw it up enough that it looks "different". but different is usually not healthy.

you can't make it albino just by screwing with the temps. but you can pull the snake from the egg way too early, snip off the yolk, and have an animal live for a few hours, or few days, that has underdeveloped pigment that looks "weird" and "morph like".

if you see a batch of babies directly imported from Afrika, you frequently find smaller babies with unusual or bright coloring that while very pretty, are never "quite right". that is very common. i don't know exactly how these are created, but i have heard that perhaps it is from cutting the egg too early to make a shipment. you will probably buy these babies for the first few years, before you learn the lesson that they hardly ever live very long, and there are more negative factors going on with them than just an unusual appearance.
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robyn@proexotics.com

Pro Exotics Reptiles