SnakeMorphs.com

2003 Clutch #3

M00AJPN X F00AREMB

This is a very exciting clutch for me for several reasons.  Mainly because it is my first 2nd generation breeding of ball pythons.  I hatched this girl in my first clutch of ball pythons in 2000.  "Bandy" is the biggest of the four females I kept from that clutch (they had twin brothers which I sold).  It looks like one of her sisters will also lay this year.  

Here is a picture of her the day before she laid.

 

I woke up at 4 am on 5/3/2003 wondering if she would lay that day so I checked and found this.  She is in the process of laying her 4th good egg (the one top center is an infertile "slug") and has one more to go.

 

Here she is after she finished laying and gathered all the eggs together in her coils.  Pythons are good mothers to their eggs but most people remove the eggs for artificial incubation where the keeper has more control over the environment.  I'm trying maternal incubation for the first time with my clutch #1.

 

I hate taking the mothers away from their eggs but Bandy is kind of light after laying her first clutch and I don't want her to go another two months without eating.  Also, I don't have any past experience with maternal incubation and what conditions the mother needs to succeed.  Here is the clutch of five good eggs after I took Bandy off (she didn't protest as much as some have but maybe she was tired).

 

I used to see eggs strung together like this a lot in corn snakes.

 

Here is the clutch arranged in an incubation box.

 

And here they are in the incubator I built this year using an old freezer.  I got a failed freezer for free from a friend in the appliance business but I recommend getting one that did NOT fail due to an internal leak as it takes some time for the insulation to dry and stop stinking of compressor oil.  The heat is supplied by about a foot of 11" wide heat tape sandwiched between two large floor tiles and raised off the floor a bit to let the air circulate under too.   It is controlled with a nice thermostat (Big Apple's 300W "Herp Power").  A computer processor fan moves air from top to bottom down a 2" PVC pipe.  I had to steal the humidifying "water tub" for this last clutch of eggs but I'll go get another.  The reason you see three egg boxes is because the mother threw one egg out of the maternal incubating clutch so that egg is in here too.  If I can find or build a good display incubator I'm hoping to put that lone egg on display at a children's science museum in Fort Collins Colorado.

 

Clutch #3 is also exciting to me because it represents my first opportunity to actually produce a genetic morph.  My domain name "SnakeMorphs" is the result of years of interest in snake genetic morphs but my desire to actually produce a genetic ball python morph is not yet fulfilled.  Bandy's father is a heterozygous albino from NERD so she has a 50% chance of carrying the recessive albino gene.

Here is a picture of Bandy's mate.  He has a 66% chance of carrying the albino gene (both of his parents where normal looking albino gene carriers and he had an albino sibling).  I purchased him from Dembinski Reptiles but he was produced by Paul Newstead.  The topper is that his father also carried the Jolliff strain axanthic gene (he had a Jolliff axanthic half sibling) which makes him 50% chance heterozygous for that gene and hence 33% chance double heterozygous for the two gene combo to make a "Snow Ball". 

 

The odds are long on my even producing an albino much less an albino heterozygous for Jolliff axanthic but this is the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

Two of the eggs started looking bad in the first week or two and a third followed them in another week.  By day 59 one of the remaining two had begun to develop a clear window on the side of the egg.  I don't know if that is a bad thing but it worried me and it was time for hatching so I pinched back the membrane and carefully made a small slit.  All I saw was white so at first I though somehow the egg was infertile but didn't go bad and I was seeing all the way through.  Lighting was poor but I could tell there was some kind of a baby in there but I didn't want to mess with it much so I ran to the store and picked up a flashlight and a digital camera.  By this time it was incubator temperature outside so I took the egg into the shade on the deck and opened it up a bit more and took some pictures.  Apparently what I first saw was mainly the belly and this is indeed an albino and not some how a snow (I was getting REALLY excited there for a bit).  I did see what looks like good veins (I'm no expert) but I didn't like something about the way this guy is laying.  I did not see him move at all.  While I was at it I made a small slit in the 2nd one and saw that it also was albino and it did move.

Here is the first one:

 

By day 62 for these eggs some closely related (but not albino) eggs from clutch 4 had hatched even though they where laid a week later.  I saw no signs of life in either of these two.  I opened the eggs and found both baby albinos where deformed and dead.  

At first I suspected I mixed the vermiculite too wet for this clutch.  I had some similar problems (and similar deformities) with an unrelated clutch last year and blamed it on low and fluctuating temperatures.  I think I did a good job of avoiding those problems this year with my new incubator and in retrospect the clutch last year may well have been too wet also.  

This was the first year I started actually weighing the vermiculite and water aiming for the 1 to 1 by weight (about 8 or 9 to 1 by volume with my vermiculite) mix.  I know that with the clutch before this one (clutch 2) I was still winging the mix ratio with the old "just wet enough to stick together" method but I can't remember if I first tried weighing for this or a later clutch.  At any rate, I'll err on the side of too dry from now on.  I may even go so far as to build an incubator room so as to avoid even temporary temp drops from opening a small incubator.  

An experienced breeder has suggested that these types of deformities may be caused by high temperatures.  I really didn't think my incubator got too hot but as a precaution I hope to replace what I thought was a good thermostat with an even better one and also upgrade my redundant thermometers.  I'm also wondering if the problems could have happened before they were even laid.  Gravid females are known to sometimes seek the cool end of their cage.  Maybe I didn't provide mom with enough temperature gradient to get these eggs off to the proper start.

The other thing I can think of that I would have done different involves using Desenex (2% Miconazole Nitrate) athlete's foot powder to treat egg fungus.  When the first two of the three eggs that died early (or may have been infertile) started to grow fungus I left them all together and treated the fungus with the Desenex.  I've been told that this can sometimes save a fungus attacked egg but I think these where already dead and it had little effect.  I don't know why I didn't think to separate the good from the fungus eggs before treating just in case the Miconazole Nitrate exposed the good eggs to unnecessary risk.  I really don't think this caused the problems as clutch 4 with the same treatment hatched out two healthy looking (normal) babies.

Follow this link to a page with pictures of the dead deformed babies.  WARNING, these pictures are extremely graphic and may be disturbing to you even if they weren't your snakes so the next button below skips this page for those who don't want to view them.

 

The Odds

The following lists the odds I calculated for getting albinos while these eggs where incubating.  I believe my chance of going two for two on albinos with these possible het parents was only about 2%.  Hopefully I can combine continued good morph luck and better incubation procedures next year to hatch healthy morphs.

Chance both parents are het for albino (necessary to even have the chance of producing an albino):  66% X 50% = 33%

Chance of getting at least one albino out of 2 eggs (this assumes I can hatch the remaining two good looking eggs) from a het X het breeding:  1 - 0.75^2 = 44%

So, the chances that I will hatch at least one albino out of this clutch is only:  33% X 44% = 15%  I'm nearly 6 times more likely not to hatch an albino than to hatch one!!!

Of course there are now lots of albinos out there so this really isn't such a big deal except that I really want one.  Now the thing that would be somewhat of a big deal (but still I suppose a fair number of them will be out there by this year) would be to produce an albino het for axanthic.

My male has a 50% chance of being het for Jolliff axanthic so until I know if I hit the 50% chance of that with him I'll think of his offspring as 25% chance het axanthic (technically they are either 50% chance or near 0% chance depending on how the father came out on his 50% chance).

So, the chance that I'll produce at least one albino that is also het Jolliff axanthic is 25% X 15% = 4%.  To top it off, I would have no way of knowing if any albino I may produce is het for axanthic without growing it up and breeding it to another carrier of the same axanthic gene and getting lucky enough to produce an axanthic.  Good thing I'm in no hurry!  

Any success I have will be an affirmation for all the little guys like me buying possible hets on a budget and if I don't have any luck at least I have less than $700 original purchase price (and of course years of work and lots of feeders and electricity) in this project.

Check back around July 2nd 2003 to see what hatches!