Maggie laid six beautiful eggs for me on May 21! She did not progress through the season in the “textbook” fashion that Delilah did, so I was really nervous about the fertility of her eggs. But here they are, looking just perfect! Maggie is a hypo Mojave. She was bred to the same pinstripe het hypo male as Delilah. This is a super exciting clutch to me because there are eight possibilities that could come from this cross. Statistically, they are all equally likely. With six eggs, I can’t even hatch everything with this one clutch.
Here’s the list of possibilities:
Normal het Hypo
Pinstripe het Hypo
Mojave het Hypo
Hypo
Hypo Mojave
Hypo Pinstripe
Mojave Pinstripe (Jigsaw)
Hypo Mojave Pinstripe (Hypo Jigsaw)
Wow! I can’t wait to see what I end up with!
A couple months ago, I posted about our first ball python eggs. The time has come and the eggs have hatched! Monday afternoon, my daughter came running down to tell me that one of the eggs had pipped:
On Tuesday, a couple more had pipped. They were very shy, hiding in their eggs when I tried to take pictures. I managed to catch one with it’s head out!
By Wednesday evening, the first two were out. The last little straggler waited until Friday morning to make it’s appearance. They had their first photo shoot on Saturday:
This has been such an exciting week! I can’t wait to do it all again! Maggie should be laying her eggs sometime this week – hoping for a good clutch!
This is our first year breeding ball pythons. I have three girls breeding this season: a pied bred to our pinstripe het hypo male, a hypo Mojave bred to the same male, and an albino female bred to an albino pos het pied male. The albino male is pretty small and I have yet to see any locks with him, but I guess time will tell if there’s anything going on that I’m missing.
Here are some pictures that I’ve taken throughout the season to document our first attempts at breeding ball pythons!
Delilah and Lono Lock
Delilah & Lono Lock closeup
Delilah progressed pretty much by the book – it was very cool to open her bin & see her doing exactly what she should be!
Delilah bowl wrapping 1-20-10
Delilah progressing nicely! 2-25-10
Delilah Gravid 3-10-10
She hated the hide set up like that. The next time I checked on her she was underneath it, so I removed it from her bin.
Sunday, March 14, 2010 was a huge day for us! We had to leave early for my daughter’s horse show, but I ran up to the reptile building to check on everything before we left. I found that Delilah, our pied ball python, had laid one big beautiful egg already with more to come! It was probably best that I was forced to leave her alone, but was sad that I couldn’t take pictures of her laying. When we returned home, I found that she had laid 4 eggs and a little slug. My daughter helped me get the eggs set up and Delilah set up in a new, clean bin.
Delilah on Eggs 3-14-10
Delilah's Eggs 3-14-10
My Daughter with Delilah's Egg
The 2010 breeding season is off to an exciting start! I’ve spent the last couple of years raising up my first few ball pythons and a couple of the females are ready to breed this season! Last week, I noticed my pied girl, Delilah, partially wrapped around her bowl and thought I would see what would happen if I introduced a male into her bin. A little while later, they looked like this! Woot!
Delilah & Lono
Her true intended is an albino that is possibly het for pied, but he is still very small and less than a year old. Our other male, Lono, is a pinstripe het for hypo. So hopefully, I’ll end up with some pins het for pied & possibly het for hypo. I’m so excited about this first step!!
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