Just thought I’d start a new thread this year chronicling my 2024 breeding plans and progress. This year, I’m planning on doing four pairings and I thought it would be fun to take ‘couples photos’ of each pair before the season really gets started. So first up is Zinnia and Thistle. I tried to breed them last year and I feel confident that Zinnia ovulated, but Thistle is my shyest snake and never got the job done. He didn’t seem stressed out by being with her, but just not interested in anything more than cuddling! So this year, I’ve decided to cohab them for the season, so hopefully he won’t feel stressed by being pulled out of his home and put into a plastic box every week. They’ve been living together since December, with close attention paid to make sure they seem okay with it. And they do seem to get along very well, no pushing, no feeding strikes, no tail buzzing, etc. Neither snake has known hets, so they’re kind of just a ‘for fun’ pairing, to see if anything unusual pops up. Thistle is a shatter (also sold as hypo - but I’m not so sure) and Zinnia is a sunkissed tessera. So I’m expecting sunkissed and sunkissed tesseras from them if they breed this year.
Very difficult to photograph two snakes at once and neither really cooperated! Zinnia hid her head the entire time and Thistle wouldn’t stop moving his!
This is such a fun idea! Whatever they end up producing, at least they take a really exceptional couples’ photo, ha. Good luck with getting these two to get the deed done this year!
Okie dokie, here is potential pairing number 2! This is Pinyon and Dot. Both are possibly het palmetto and Pinyon is also het and pos het for a bunch of other things. I currently have 2.3 pos het palmettos that I’m hoping to breed, but I simply can’t do too many pairings in a single season, so I’m starting with these two - the two that I think are most likely to be carrying the gene. Pinyon (the normal male) definitely has a hypo-ish appearance. Dot (the normal stripe female) hatched out with a white paradox patch of scales, which I feel like might be an indication of being het palmetto. As her color changed with age, the paradox spot became very faint. Anyway, here they are. They were very difficult to photograph, wanting nothing to do with each other or me! So only one photo of them for now.
Here is potential pairing number 3. Somehow they were even worse to photograph than the last pair! So this is the only, terrible photo that shows them both. I might have to try them again at some point. This is Feldspar (shatter het lava and amel) and Krakatoa (lava stripe het cinder). It will be Krakatoa’s first year breeding and Feldspar’s second. He did great last year.
And for the fourth and likely final pairing, I have Sven (sunkissed lava tessera male) and Clementine (lava cinder female). I tried to breed them last year, but Sven was only a year old. He tried his best and Clementine did lay eggs last year, but none went to full term. So I’m hoping with one more year of growth under his belt, Sven will be able to get the job done this year.
Any of these pairings might still get changed depending on how the snakes do! We’ll have to wait and see.
This is a potential pairing as well. I’m not 100% sure if I will attempt these two, but it would be fun! Midas and Lark, golddust stripe and ultramel tessera.
I didn’t photograph this pair in time because I wasn’t sure if I was going to breed them this year or next year. But I gave them a little introduction date and was very surprised to see my first lock of the year!
This is Feldspar, shatter, and Blitzen, sunkissed lava.
Another first lock from another pair this morning. Periwinkle and Wisteria - Lavender motley and lavender pinstripe motley. This picture is not doing them any favors. My phone always washes them out and the reddish background looks bad with the purples, pinks, and grays. Oh well.
I went ahead and removed her eggs to check on her and give her a drink. She still has more in her and one of them looks pretty high up still. But so far she’s laid 18 good eggs and 3 slugs.
Blitzen managed to get her last egg out (looks like a slug). I gave her a swim and a little massage yesterday, which didn’t seem to help. So I gave her a very small meal and left her for another 24 hours. And that did the trick! So glad they’re all out and she looks in great shape.
