Baby snake eating update

Today, I fed all the baby snakes from this year. I won't go into too many details, but this was an important feeding, since it was the 3rd opportunity for babies from the last 2 clutches to eat. If a baby snake eats 3 times, we can usually assume that it will be a consistently good eater, although there have been exceptions on occasion. The results at this time are encouraging: of the 57 babies that we currently have, 43 have eaten at least 3 times, 6 have eaten twice (having skipped last week), 2 have eaten only once, and 6 have consistently refused to eat. This does not count the 8 from earlier clutches that refused to eat that we had already taken to Golan to see if he can get them to eat. I was particularly pleased about the 6 that ate this week who hadn't eaten last week, since they are from Y'hudit's clutch, meaning that they are all heterozygous for both caramel and anerythrism (and the ones that are not hypomelanistic are also het for hypo).

More hatching!

Yesterday evening (Monday evening), the first eggs in the 4th clutch began pipping. None of them have crawled out of their eggs yet. This clutch is from a male corn snake, Gavnoni, who is normal (although he has had a lot of weird bumps since he himself hatched, 4 years ago!) but heterozygous for amelanism and anerythrism, and a female amelanistic corn snake (D'vorah), whom we got from our friend, Golan, in trade for the snakes that we gave him. If D'vorah is het (heterozygous) for anerythrism, we should get some anerythristics and some snows (amelanistic AND anerythristic) from this clutch. If not, we'll get about half normals and half amelanistics. In another day, we should know.

One egg in the 5th clutched also pipped, and, in fact, the snakeling has already crawled out of that one. This clutch was laid 3 days after the 4th one by Y'hudit, an anerythristic corn snake that we also got from Golan in the same trade. The father is Yeled, our amber (hypomelanistic caramel) corn snake. Barring any unexpected hidden genes on either side, this clutch will be entirely normal, but they will ALL be het for hypomelanism, caramel, and anerythrism. So, when they are later bred to each other, it will be possible to get normals, normal hypos, caramels, anerythristics, ambers, and ghosts (hypomelanistic anerythristics).