Well....some of you may remember that this was my first season breeding snakes....and WHAT A RIDE!! It seems as though the year FLEW by, yet at the same time took forever....LOL...
I bred a young 600 gram albino male to a normal 1800 gram female....and she dropped 5 good eggs and 3 slugs on May 10th... I incubated at 89.7 degrees...ish....and on the morning day 55 my first ever ball python pipped and peaked its head out to contemplate entering its new world! The next day a second head was poking out! I had 2 new very slightly special looking babies and slit the other three eggs....(one egg looked like it died around day 45 though)....
I could see 2 fully developed snakes that moved when touched and one that looked closely behind in development, but was much lighter in color and extremely reduced in pattern...and was obviously not alive.....(the dead egg)....
On Friday night....day 59....I poked around the eggs a little bit and there was no movement....so I decided to pull them from the eggs....and what I discovered drew conflicting emotions of ecstatic joy, and extreme disappointment. Of the 3 babies that I pulled from the eggs one was a 100% unbroken blackback.....one was 85% unbroken black back....and one (from the dead egg) was very pale with a very thin purplish pattern, banded and somewhat similar to a spider....
All three were severely kinked from neck to tail and not alive....
I was wondering what your thoughts on my results were.... Could the kinking have somehow been my fault? (a problem with my incubation?) Is it possible that the very young male could have had something to do with it? (possibly this line of albino was line bred too long?)
Since the two babies that made it out of the eggs alive and healthy do have mostly normal patterns, and the kinked babies all have extremely abberrant patterns, could either one of the parents be carrying a pattern trait that may also somehow be linked to the kinking?
I'd really appreciate any thoughts, facts, or ideas you might be able to post for me.....or maybe even a link to some info on kinked babies....
And I'd also like to thank you Gail for all of the advice and help you've given me, since the first week I put the male in with the female! Thanks!! I'm not the proud papa of two unsexed 100% het albinos!!!!!!!
