Well I have to say I was close to throwing in the towel guys. But with everone's advice and support I decided that I just cannot giveup.
I already had given up on getting ANY EGGS this season. It was a major bummer because as you know I have NEVER had a single clutch of ANY type of snakes in my entire life.
Tried with corn-snakes, raised a beautiful group of 25 hatchlings to adults, but when it came time to breed them I started having some medical problems, problems that forced me to sell the entire collection which really broke me.
A few years later I myself was in a lot better health, started with 6 (all nice morph) burmese pythons, 3+ years into it, one breeding no eggs and then respitory infections out the butt, lost my favorite female to a constant battle with an RI. Quit burmese after reading a very interesting article about the cronic RI infections in burmese pythons written by Dave Barker.
Now 3 more years and finally eggs, but nothing to be excited about, ATLEAST not yet.
As of right now I am sick to my stomach. I had 6 females breed for me this year for the first time. If you remember we came to the conclusion that my air temps were to high, so it seemed that nothing came of the breedings.
On Friday of this week I cleaned and watered all of the snake cages. Last week I had about 25 snakes feed since there winter-fast. So I had some poop to cleanup because the snake room started to smell a bit.
Come Sunday TODAY the room started to smell again. A lot of the snakes shed because of the first meal they had in a long time, so they also pooped. My plans were to go to a friend's Memorial Day party today since I did all the snake work Friday.
But the room was a bit stinky, so instead of waiting until Monday at the LAST MINUTE I decided that it would be best to go through every cage one more time looking for poop. At the same time I decided to change ALL of the water bowls again.
Well when I got to my small rack of 2001 HET albino females I had to grab on to the rack. As I felt a sudden shock of sickness. I looked closer into the hide box and there they were 7 eggs total, 1 slug 6 nice BIG white eggs, the first eggs I have ever seen in my entire life (besides in pictures!) face to face with the real deal!
Yes I freaked out, OHH MY GOD, I did not think I was going to get anything this year. This female did not even look big prior to laying the eggs. The only thing was she was off feed for a VERY long time and still is.
I had no incubator setup, and to be honest was not even sure how to setup my hovabator since I never did it before.
The room was aprox 82 degrees, 70% humidity the female was coiled around the eggs near the 90 degree heat tape but not directly on it.
I have no idea how long they eggs were there. They still were nice and full and not dented in, I hope that is a good sign.
First thing I did was crank up the humidity in the ROOM itself since the racks are open-air. I then bumped the air temp in the room all the way up to 88. It was like a steam bath in the room.
I finally setup the hovabator and with some dinking around I was able to setup a spare Helix DPS-1000 thermostat to it, instead of using the one that comes with it.
I popped in the Snake Keeper Video to get the ratios of water/vermiculate and what I had left of perlite.
The eggs are in the incubator, The temps are bouncing between 88.2 and 88.9 with the helix DPS-1000 set at 89.0 degrees.
I hope I was not to late, I hope the eggs were not sitting in with the female for to long. I am so nervous you have no IDEA.
What worries me even more is if any of my other females may drop eggs! I don't have another incubator. These females are HET albinos bred to a male albino so YES I am having a heart-attack, and YES I deserve it for assuming that nothing was going to happend, and not being prepared incase it did.
I just don't know what to think, part of me is so excited but yet I am so sick that I MESSED UP and nothing may come of this.
1:36AM, I cannot imagine how I am going to sleep tonight.
Sorry for such a long post, if you read the whole thing thank you. This clutch of eggs was from a 2001 CLARK HET albino female, who was aprox 2050 grams. She was bred to MALE albino (who if doesnt eat soon is going to waste away) He is still off feed since late December 2003.
PS I cleaned the female's cage with soap and water, clean the hide box also, and cleaned HER with some delicate soap, I saw this on the videos. Man she looks super skinny now I sure hope she starts to eat soon!
I will get some pictures of the eggs when I can, I am just to tired from the events of today to take any pictures now.
