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Nice to come home to this.

mingdurga May 21, 2014 06:29 PM

100% het albino x male evans hypo. 230 grams before and 368 with eggs. 187 grams post egg laying.

Albino fem. x male conda (100% albino) still in the process.
250 before and 410 with eggs.

Fem.albino conda x same conda. 152 grams before and 220 with eggs.
She too is in the process. Never bred them at this weight before but she looks great.

Eggs look nice with a few maybes and 3 duds for the het.

I'm not optimistic about eggs till the little ones pop out nice and healthy.

enjoy the pix. Mike

Replies (5)

DISCERN May 21, 2014 09:57 PM

Congrats!
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Genesis 1:1

reako45 May 22, 2014 06:38 AM

Congrats. Looks like a good sized clutch. First clutch?

reako45

FR May 22, 2014 07:34 AM

Great post Mike, thank you so much. Let me whine for a minute. In the time I have been here, that's one of the very few posts with actual details. Thanks so much for sharing.
About your eggs, all but one look good. One has blood on it? if so, that can be caused by oviduct issues. Where the egg adheres to the membrane. Sometimes theres no harm, others there is. Key an eye on that.
About nesting, what was the time from shedding to deposition of the eggs. This measurement is very telling and is a good gauge as to how well your substrate is working. Since I started posting deep nesting pics here and other places, most that have tried deep to not even that deep, have received eggs the day after shedding. Once you observe that, you will see a difference in the eggs.
The point is, snakes have a window in which to deposit the eggs, after a certain amount of time, the eggs enlarge and that makes it hard to pass. The embryo grows and requires more support, then at some point, dies. Again, there is a window.
Eggs deposited as soon as they are ready, have little to no embryo development, eggs held longer, of course have more embryo development. Also weight loss by the female is measurable. That you already measure, so you will have something to compare.
Please understand, your nesting is the opposite of what I often see here or in a couple of hog books where eggs are scattered around a cage. That's what I call aborting. That is, where the female cannot hold them any longer, so she stops any nesting behavior and drops the eggs.
The Model is wild females, they move to the nesting areas in the fall and overwinter at or near the nesting sites. So they do not have to find suitable areas, they are there well before they copulate. Its rare a female has to find a place to drop eggs.
Great work and thanks, great report.

mingdurga May 22, 2014 12:12 PM

The two adults in the 235 range both shed on may 13th, and laid eggs on the 21st. Smaller one was opaque 5 days ago, but she looks ready to drop anyway.

Started breeding westerns in the 70's but had a lot of binding and lost my girls even though they were taken to the vet. Good info back then was deep throat stuff. Now the internet is full of advice so you can make your own decisions. Still enjoying the show.

Mike

FR May 22, 2014 12:38 PM

So 8 days, that was considered normal years ago. So recently, Steve Perry reported one with his version of deep nesting, laid the next day. So we have a range of days from one to say 14.
What occurs while they are holding eggs? that is a good question and not the only one, just a good one?
When gravid, they gain weight, then at some point, they appear skinny and fat at the same time, to a point if the scales thin, the snake appears A shaped instead of roundish. etc.
So the question is what is normal or good. I and I am sure most would say, to drop the eggs at or just before the female starts to thin out. Which would be a good thing.
So with deep nesting( and let me tell you nothing I have ever done as good as nature). They will drop all on their own, the eggs before the females start to look bad. Our job as keepers should be to make it as easy as possible which is normal to the wild females. Its all about our way of applying words, some factory breeders place them in nests at 9 days, and say, they are ready and they are. More accurately, they are past ready and within harmful. In my experience, harm starts to occur somewhere after 9 days. In your conditions, only you can set that in a meaningful way. As your conditions can vary. That said, 1 to 5 days seems to be good, 5 to 10 days, not as good, but not harmful, 10 days and beyond, CAN be harmful and can cause death. Remember, this is only guide. It will be fun to see what happens next year. Also, the above is only for you to compare to. As long as your animals are healthy and your happy, its all good.

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