Advice on First Clutch: help!

After deliberation, I believe this is a Super. 3 supers!

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3 out of 5 being supers with the 3 albinos… you hit really good odds. Now you just need to mix that albino in with your tiger pied :grin:.
Jolliff tiger albino pieds are such a good combination of those morphs.

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Thank you and I Agree! My Tiger Pied is 66% Het Albino. So that’s a possible cherry on top. So many projects, so little time. Lol

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Oh that’s really nice! That can cut you some time on projects if your tiger pied proves to be het albino. Definitely keep us in the loop once you pair those.

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No idea what a jollif tiger is haha I though I was in the wrong snake chat

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@loganstark

Here is a thread about Joliffs Tiger with a few combo pictures and a discussion about the name.

Tiger Combo vs Tiger Gene

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First “Pro” photo of one of the hatchlings! Number 4 who is the only one who has been successfully sexed so far. 1.0 Super Jolliff Tiger Albino.

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Question about what to do at the ~48 day mark. We are at day 50. I have our little unexpected eggs in a cooler incubator so there’s no air circulation. Should I add in a computer fan to circulate air and put holes in the bin? Here’s what everything looks like for reference. OMG I opened the incubator to take a photo and 2 of the eggs have a bit of mold growing on them and now I’m freaking out! I have been checking on them quickly once or twice a week so I didn’t cause any crazy temperature or humidity drops and I had peeked 2 days ago and added a bit of foot powder to 1 egg that was showing some discoloration and now that one looks worse and another one is looking bad! What do I do? Do they have a chance of surviving? And this is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to even think of breeding anytime soon, if ever. I don’t have the knowledge or capability it seems to even successfully incubate even one clutch without screwing something up! I’m so upset and mad at myself. HELP




When you say looking worse, what do you mean exactly? From what I can see in that photo, they just look like they’re starting to dimple and don’t really seem very discolored, but it’s hard to see inside the container.

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They are more of a grayish-green tone than what the photo shows and definitely look like they are going yucky on the outside and have a slightly clear-ish and weaker feel to the shells compared to the other 2 that look ok to me. There is no moisture or condensation dripping on them at all so I’m at a loss as to why those 2 suddenly changed and within such a short time span. I mean, 48 days or so of looking normal and then boom.

These days I don’t even remove the press-n-seal at all until day 50, then I just lift a little of the edge to let some air come in under the lid. If you’re worried that the incubator itself is air tight, (although it probably isn’t unless it has a gasket,) just peeking in once a day after day 50 or so should give them more than enough air each day until they hatch.

A little mold isn’t unusual. Anything where the mold looks aggressive I rub a little lotramin powder every 1-2 weeks if it grows back. It takes a lot of mold to kill an egg. Candle yours and see how the veins are.

At day 48 they should be starting to get a bit softer. If you don’t have a fan circulating in the incubator then one side is probably hotter than the other so some might hatch a bit faster than others. Most likely not a problem for just one tub in there.

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Ahh thank you for the information. I have been freaking out all day. The first egg that started getting a little discolored gradually became more discolored but it was not stuck to any other egg and figured it was no big deal. I actually did rub lotramin powder every time I thought it was needing a fresh dusting. So it was a gradual decline with slightly more discoloration that had managed to go from one patch of the egg being discolored to the whole egg being discolored. I took my phone to my snake room to take some quick pictures of my setup and egg bin so that I could show the incubator and the eggs in the bin. I was horrified when I saw another egg fully discolored. It’s That attached to the normal looking egg. I quickly double checked that the egg crate things were still positioned so that the eggs were not sitting directly on the perlite and the gently lifted the first discolored egg to egg looked normal like the other two white ones but I had literally peeked in to see if I needed to add more lotrimin powder to the softer discolored egg and and my heart sank. I was horrified to notice 2 furry mold patches on the bottom of the older egg. I was freaking out and had a panic attack. I threw some powder in an upwards motion, hoping to get some directly on the bottom of the moldy hairy egg and put it back down. I am so confused as to why the 2nd egg turned the color of mold and developed a few seemingly frosted window-like patches in only 2 days most of the way through incubation. There’s was no condensation dripping on the eggs and hasn’t been present at all through the whole incubation period, and per some clever advice I read that you can position the bin so that it’s crooked enough to have any droplets roll down the incline and drip at the edge instead of directly onto the eggs. On day 48 I felt cautiously optimistic that the first moldy egg would continue its slow transition all the way till the baby pipped but now I’m less optimistic and more prepared to accept the fact that the mold and discoloration had lowered the chances of a healthy live baby would hatch. I’m not sure if the 2nd egg will last till pip time due to the quick deterioration.

Do you have any experience dealing with any similar issues in any of your clutches? I have a wifi govee inside the egg box that is set to give an audible notification on my phone of any temp or humidity drop or rise of >2° no matter if I’m home or not. So if it seems like there was no spike in either then why would they go bad this late in the process? What did I do wrong? Ugh I’m going to be losing lots of sleep for the next several days while I wait for either obvious signs that the hatchlings didn’t make it or that they hatch out healthy. I am certainly having second thoughts on trying my hand at intentionally breeding 2 of my own snakes to hatch out a clutch that I would actually be aware of and prepared for. I really wanted to have my daughter go through the whole process alongside me so that she could experience and learn hands on from start to finish. Then keep them all and we live happily ever after. But I don’t think I’d ever be able to go through it again and beating myself up about any complications that may arise.

Thank you for asking about my progress. You really did give me a glimmer of hope. I’m hoping I get lucky and have a mostly positive experience with a few complications rather than a sad experience that took an nosedive towards the very end of incubation. It’s not impossible for those 2 babies to come out unaffected by the dumpster fire outside of the egg lol

Day 51, here are a few photos that I just took.


Day 53. Hoping the babies inside the moldy ones are still hanging on. Those two plus the far right one are sinking so seems like there’s still hope. They don’t smell like the egg that went bad around day 10. It smelled terrible so these two just might make it.

Day 56. One of the moldy eggs went bad so we took it out of the incubator. It smelled bad. We candled the rest and we did see veins in all of the 3 remaining eggs but it was hard to see them, presumably because the babies are getting big and they are taking up most of the egg. Am I correct?

Also, we had to leave the other moldy attached to one of the good eggs because it isn’t possible to separate it.

Hoping the other babies are viable. My daughter said she saw movement in one of them and I thought I saw a little tail move, but I’m not sure if I’m hoping so much that they are ok that my mind is making things up.

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Sorry about the other lost egg. The 2 non-moldy ones are looking ok and I bet they’ll hatch for you.

With the moldy one it looks like quite a lot of the powder caked on there. Normally I will dust a moldy spot and then kind of gently rub the powder in as if it was onto my skin, and brush/blow off any excessive powder. My way of thinking about my eggs is to keep in mind that the egg shells are also the lungs for the embryo, so air always needs to get thru to the areas where the veins are. But it’s just the way I’ve done it - not saying it’s necessarily a cause for any of your issues or not. I’ve lost an egg or two to mold as well. Sadly no matter what we do some eggs/babies just aren’t meant to make it.

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Thank you so much for the insight and tips. I went in and removed the excess foot powder. Originally I had rubbed a tiny bit on the moldy parts but it got worse by the day anyway. I feel like a failure and I thought I did things right from the start even though I was caught off guard by the whole situation. There has never been any condensation nor wet substrate touching the eggs. I’m sure there’s some reason for the moldy eggs and the only thing I can think of was having damaged them when I separated them from each other with floss but I don’t remember if they were both attached. I did separate a slug within the first few days of incubation.
That said, the one on the far right is dimpled a lot so I am hoping I’ll see a pip in the near future. In the meantime I’m watching YouTube videos and reading about what to do if/when they hatch.

Day 57. Forgot to take a photo when I checked on them. I started freaking out because the one on the right started feeling a bit more leathery than the other one so I frantically read posts and watched videos and considered cutting it but I got distracted when my dog had stepped in poo and was running around the house :rofl: I’m glad I walked away from the egg situation because when I came back with scissors in hand it didn’t feel as tough as I thought. Catastrophizing is a not-so-great quality of mine. I really hope the 2 good ones make it. I don’t know how you guys as breeders handle the stress and anticipation, lots of respect to everyone!

Day 58: sigh. Nothing new. Candled the 2 good-ish ones; still seeing veins but didn’t notice any movement.

Hang in there. You’re almost there. We’re pulling for you.

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