For 2 years now I have been waiting for my Mystic male to breed. He finally decided to turn on this year. We have 5 clutches in the incubator and 2 more coming from him. This first clutch was a bit of a surprise. This Pastel female always lays early in the season. She ended up laying eggs, and I never saw the Mystic breed with her. Last year she bred the Cinnamon, and produced 3 Cinnamons and 3 Pastels but no Pewters or Normals. So, I was curiousto see if she would produce any Cinnamons or Pewters thisyear. Our Mystic never turned on, and I never saw a copulation by himuntil this clutch was already on the ground. Well, the Mystic got it doner. We ended up with a male Pastel Mystic, a male Mystic and 2.1 Normals. Her is a pic of the Pastel Mystic and the Mystic.
We still have two shots at Mystic Potions, and two more shots at new Mystic crosses. Stay tuned to see what those might be.

Another week come and gone. We made an adjustment to our incubator temps. We had been incubating at 88 degrees this year, and still cutting our eggs at day 50-52. Well the eggs aren’t hatching until day 62 or so, and I think the babies were being exposed too long, and it was causing problems. We increased the temps back to 89 degrees, and we will see how that works. We did cut our clutch from Mystic to Pastel, and it looks like it will be exciting. That is all I will say for now. Check back early next week, and we should have some pics up.

Lastly, we got another one of our most exciting clutches this morning. I opened tubs this morning to find our Sterling female sitting on eggs. She bred our Pied male, so this clutch only has two outcomes. Pastel Het Pieds or Pewter Het Pieds. Here’s to a pile of Pewters. I was also surprised by the fact that she was sitting on 7 eggs. I palpated her numerous times throughout the season and only ever felt 5 follicles. The strange thing is out of 7 eggs, we still only have five, as 2 of them are infertile. They are still in the incubator, but I bet they’ll be dead in a week or two. Enjoy the pic below.

We got clutch #31 tonight, and it happens to be the second of about 4 of my most anticipated clutches of the year. This clutch was from breeding our Pied male to a VPI Axanthic female. I have been wanting to start this project for a while, and even more so after I saw the Lightning Pieds produced by Mark Mandic last year. Hopefully I can get some decent odds from this 5 egg clutch. Here is the pic of the proud momma.

Also, we have been building a new snake room, as we have run out of space. I happened to have the camera out for the above clutch, and decided to take a pic of our progress. The far wall is actually the other side of our new storage room for rodent chow and shavings, and on the other side of that is the rodent room. The new room will be 12′ by 25′. The goal is to have it done before the NARBC Tinley show. I think we should be able to meet the deadline. Here is the most recent pic.

We got our first ever Corn snake eggs today. We bought some corns 3 and 4 years ago, and have kept themin the living room, mostly just as display animals. However, I knew with my addiction, I would one day breed them, so I bought 1 male and 3 females. Our 2 4 year old females bred this year, and so far we have one clutch. This is from breeding our Hypo Lavender male to a Candy Cane female. Unless one of them is carrying something we didn’t know about, then all of the babies should be normal, but triple hets. Breeding some of their babies back together would probably be fun. Here is the pic.

We also got a clutch of eggs today from our Mojave male bred to a normal female. This is to date the only female I have that has laid a clutch of eggs every year we have bred. This is her fourth clutch in four years of breeding.

Lastly, we also hatched out 6 Het Caramel Albinos. Even though mom didn’t prove out this year to be a Het Caramel, baby 100% Hets are always fun to hatch. Maybe we just missed on the odds, and mom will prove out next year.