Reptile & Amphibian Forums

About 7 years ago, I fell head over heels for a hatchling a friend of mine had bred.It was an amel stripe/cubed motley and was the prettiest snake I had ever seen. I have a thing for stripes and I loved the little dots and dashes on the rear half of her body. Anyway, he gave it to me. Neither of us had experiance with probing or popping but it had a VERY thick tail base so we assumed it was a male. I named it Kelsey (after the bar Archie Bunker used to go to). Well, I tried to breed Kelsey but he showed no interest in females. Then I thought we might have been mistaken about the gender so I tried to breed Kelsey to males...none of the boys showed the slightest interest....

Fast forward to March...I ran out of cage space (due to a shelf unit frying) and put Kelsey in with Sniper (a 3 yr old bloodred male from the same guy I got Kelsey from). In July I went to seperate them for feeding and a very skinny Kelsey was surrounded by 14 eggs! I was stunned to say the least. Kelsey seemed fine at first but about 2 weeks after laying I found that an unlaid egg had moved down....my girl was eggbound. I had failed to provide her with a good place to lay...thinking she was a male and all. After many vet visits I lost her on August 17. And one by one her eggs started collapsing and rotting away til only 3 were left. They started pipping on Monday. Right now I have 2 hatchlings out and one unpipped egg. Now for the WONDERFUL part......BOTH hatchlings are striped and they appear to be normals....apparently Sniper was het for stripe. I have no striped corns .....I am ECSTATIC! I don't know what is hiding in that third egg...and I dont care, I am keeping all 3....I thought I would have to line breed the babies to get a stripe...and now I dont! The baby that looks most like my Kelsey will be named Kismet
And thank you to anyone who read all this.

Congrats!

Now, if only one of the three is a female, you're likely only a couple of years away from producing some real striped bloodreds!

If none of them are females, keep me in mind...I'll have some motley/bloodreds I would be willing to work with you on so as to increase my gene pool (and yours too!).

Have fun with them!
-----
Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742

Thank you so much Darin!
I am inexperianced at probing or popping so it might be awhile before I know what I have. I can't stop smiling!

Way to go! Hope the little buggers'l eat for you soon!
Read the below threads to get a "heads-up" in case you have a picky non-feeding animal!

Zee

The last egg pipped!!
Its a neon orange amel stripe! Should be out of the egg tomorrow. Was flicking its tongue at me when I checked it out.
All 3 are striped, is that normal?

Well, you really don't know what the other 11 eggs may have turned up, but I'd say it's normal to have three striped babies. Remember, genetics skips generations (in a way), that is to say that if both of Kelsey's parents were striped, than no matter what you breed her to, at least 25-50 percent of the babies would be normal (depending on Kelsey's granparents' genetics).

Zee