Lakshmi, the first time mother to be

Nature is so amazing. That a baby can grow and hatch, even in a moldy egg, is just miraculous to me.

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Nope , in that large egg there was just one large baby :disappointed_face:

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The tiny snake from the miraculous moldy egg ! That egg was most deflated and dry when I found the clutch , she filled out nicely but developed a window , I suppose it was a last egg from the clutch . I separated her from the pile coz it was barely holding. Then at the edge of the window the mold started to spread so I started daily wiping with Decasanum , its antiseptic that doesn’t burn the skin and is used in surgeries , especially in broken appendix when pus is already out , organs is washed in decasanum so it’s safe . I fought and got rid of the mold completely. Then the egg suffered a fall when I’ve lost feeling in my thumb while inspecting the egg . It fell about a meter onto a soft dog bed , no bleeding . The only consequence from the fall was a sudden rapid growth . On day 72 when half the clutch piped , she still sat there silent and I’ve got worried so I cut the egg . Since she is extremely small baby I had to push half the fluid out of the egg to be able to check on a baby . Then she poked her head out and started breathing herself . But she sat in her cut up egg for almost 3 days so I decided to check why it takes her so long . I found out that the yolk she tried to absorb is completely solid and she was bound to it by umbilical cord which I cut in the middle to remove her from that nasty egg . Set her up in a tiny container on dry paper towels so her nub have time to close and dry up . Have her water drops to drink . Today she shed , navel is closed completely and she is a beautiful anery ! Maybe it’s a boy , I can’t pop them . Anyways this baby is my holdback and I hope it’s a girl . If she is then her name is Mansa !

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Against all odds. If she shed and the umbilical area closed up, she should be good! :slight_smile:

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What a saga for the beginning of a life! Having made it this far she will probably be all right. Since the yolk became dry and she wasn’t able to absorb all of it, you might consider feeding her a bit more often initially. I usual go with a 5 day feeding schedule for really small babies or those who don’t absorb their yolk.

Have you tried candling the ones with light coloring? You can shine a light on their tail from the side and see the hemipenes or lack thereof.

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She have shed and umbilical area is completely closed . Her tail scale count is 67 so is other anery girl and one have 57 . I wonder if they are girls . Here she is ! It’s after shed photos of my miracle Mansa .

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Caryl , I tried to candle them but all I see is red in all the palmetto babies which is their veins . Her shed skin is 30 cm . She is tiny and since she drinks water a lot her vent area is full of pee inside her . She don’t let me pop her . I theoretically know how to do that but I don’t push hard enough coz I’m scared to damage her . She also have that red on her tail . The problem I can’t find a single video where someone pops such small corn babies , nor I can find pix of neonate hemipenes inside the tail to understand what I’m looking at in my babies tails .

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Yes she is the egg I promised a full story of , I didn’t wanted to tell it earlier so not let people worry . She managed to. She is out and alive . And if she turns to be a boy , then I know who I swap her name with , I have anery palmetto baby with scale count 57 which is definitely a girl . I can show the inside of her egg but it’s nasty .

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What an extraordinary miracle baby! Those are a LOT of odds to overcome. Good for her (him?).

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I’ll see if I can get a

It can be done. I’ve done it, though I didn’t video it. I don’t have any particularly tiny babies so far this season. Most are 7-8 g, the smallest is 6.5 g. I will however see if I can get some photos of candling for you. It won’t be today, though. All the boys ate last night and they’re digesting.

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I would be very grateful :smiling_face: Mansa miracle baby weight is 5 gram . Apologies for the messy table and kitchen scales :innocent:

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I have 1 tiny eggs that around half the size of the rest plus one that got a moldy

Top egg is the avarage size only weighed 4 but they were between 7 and 9g bottom the mini egg that ones 3.6g

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I know everyone loves pictures of babies :snake::smiling_face_with_three_hearts: tomorrow a friend will come over to pop them . Those 3 babies that ate , already pooped and the rest 9 babies are food cruising heavily at evening . It looks like I have one bugeye , not severe but it’s a pet only I guess and two more with very very slight bugeye . Which makes me think what the breeder of Lakshmi have , does he breed siblings ? My pair is not just unrelated , they are from totally different lines , the father of the clutch , Madhav was bought at Hamm by my friend who kept him for 8 years before giving him to me . I plan two holdbacks for future integrating them into my Microscaleless line . If I will keep one of those with very mild bugeye , it won’t affect future microscaleless palmetto babies , right as the blood will be diluted ?

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Beautiful babies! Bug eyes are part of the Palmetto leucistic mutation. It can’t be bred out or diluted. I don’t think the heritability of expression level has been proven.

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I know bugeye gets worse if siblings are bred together . But since all the palmettos in the world have one single ancestor, they are somehow related anyways

I love my miracle baby so much !! I love them all but this one I will keep . She is so calm , when she sees my hand she crawls on it and holds with her whole tiny body . Unlike the bunch of worms in commune container that try to flee the second I open the lid :joy:

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Sorry, this isn’t quite correct. Although there does seem to some truth to the fact that animals with extreme expression of bug eyes are likely to produce more extremely bug eyed babies, even this information is only anecdotal rather than actually research-based science.

This is correct, and is true of other leucistic traits in rat snakes as well. There’s simply no way to completely avoid producing bug eyes if one produces leucistic animals. One might get lucky with a clutch or two sometimes, but it can’t be prevented genetically. The traits are linked.

This is sweet, and kinda hilarious, too. Some of them do indeed hatch as “old souls.” I always love this. Others, well, it’s a rodeo getting hold of some of them for a while.

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Mansa baby , from the moldy egg , I considered her mine long before she hatched , this most poor looking egg was promised to Goddess as a thank you for Her help with delivering the eggs and helping me successfully bring everyone alive to the finish line . Therefore her name Mansa . I will know in about an hour if she is a girl or a boy . That baby knew my hands while she still was in the egg - I wiped her with Decasanum and inspected her every day . I cut her egg when I felt something is wrong and I got her out of that nasty egg when she got anchored to the dried yolk . So I guess she knows me :snake::slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m sure she knows you. They hear our voices if we talk to the eggs. I think it’s bound to help them adjust to human interaction after they hatch, and helps them to be familiar with the specific human they’ll see the most in their early days.

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Yes they definitely hear vibrations . So a friend popped them . My Mansa is a boy haha and the one I thought is boy is a girl so as I planned I swapped names . Now , tried to feed them , only 6 out of 12 ate . The best babies along with my personal 2 holdbacks didn’t eat . Plan to try and feed them around weekend . Maybe the stress of popping and them being set in separate containers was too much ?

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Now this is something I never thought of! I know babies in their wombs can hear voices so they recognize their parents after birth but I surely never thought about applying this to baby snakes! :face_with_monocle:

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