As some of you know, I’ve been anxiously awaiting eggs from two ball pythons - one who’s lay window started on the 13th, and another who was due to drop any time after the start of this week. Been waiting to see who’d drop first, and tonight we got our answer.
My crested gecko Honeydew decided to show that bigger isn’t always better, and just laid these fresh for me to find in her substrate along the front of her enclosure, as if proud to be the first reptile to give me fertile eggs this year! A bit of a surprise though, as Honey had been laying duds monthly in the spring, so I gave her a date-night with my boy Midas just to go at least two months without laying anything.
She doesn’t have the best structure with her crests, but I think her colors are really neat (pretty much goldenrod and lavender) and my boy Midas has some to hopefully compensate. I plan to incubate the eggs on the lower end for a slower incubation, as I’ve heard that helps build more robust babies with better structure and want to see if that seems to effect if her babies will have better cresting or if they’ll still have weaker structure than dad. Also interested in seeing how they turn out color/pattern wise, as dad is a orangey-yellow based phantom pin. Not sure if I’ll incubate any subsequent eggs from her aside from these two though, since this is very much a more experimental clutch.
Edit - actually, I may be misremembering who I paired her with, because thinking back on it, it may have been my red harlequin boy Hotrod… I’m not sure why my memory is fuzzy on it, but I think I actually paired Midas to my other yellow phantom girl Babycakes instead. This is why it’s important to write these things down!
I feel you lol the only confirmed pairing i had this season was the last one to actually give me eggs. I had paired up my crestie girl Banana with my LW boy Frodo, but didn’t see any signs that he got the job done, so I didn’t think anything of it, and decided to focus on some other pairings. When she then laid, i thought it might’ve been retained from last year, but the LW babies that hatched last week beg to differ
I confess that I frowned in puzzlement and thought, “I had no idea BPs could ever lay anything that tiny! How weird! And they look fertile.” Took a half second imagining the world’s tiniest ball pythons. Then I read the rest of the post.
It really is! She had me thinking she was done for the year so I gave up on looking for eggs, yet low and behold. I gotta start being a little more persistent with my expectations, I think.
@autumngeckos Gotta love it when they give you a nice surprise like that! Better than sitting and waiting with anticipation. I’ll say I’m now a bit dubious on if these two will hatch because weird brown patches have developed on them overnight, but I’ll keep incubating until there’s no debate, and if they do I’m curious to see if who’s the daddy willl be obvious like it was with yours!
@caryl That was half the fun of making this post, gotta love a fun little gotcha! I will say though, imagining a ball python coming out of an egg this tiny… what would you even feed it??
@deanaii Thanks, Dean! Here’s hoping, though they’ve oddly developed these weird brown patches that have me a little worried. Maybe color leaching from the cocofiber/sphagnum moss combo?
@caron If that isn’t the truth! And that opinion isn’t shaped from the fact that I’m a little guy myself, whatsoever! Gonna be a fun wait, crazy how something so small can still take so long to develop!
A bit of a surprise though, as Honey had been laying duds monthly in the spring, so I gave her a date-night with my boy Midas just to go at least two months without laying anything.
. I can’t wait to see those tiny babes! 
Gonna be a fun wait, crazy how something so small can still take so long to develop!
.