This season I paired up three pairs (one pair not pictured) for breeding purposes.  The original pair that has successfully bred for me in '99 and again in '01 was paired up in mid-October.  They only copulated a few times but stayed near each other for quite a bit after that.  The last copulation I saw between them was in mid-January.  In early March the female began searching the enclosure day and night.  So I added a nest box on the off chance she was gravid.  She immediately went in and settled down.  Since I did not believe these animals to be actively breeding I hadn't added a heat spot for the female and my concern is that she won't lay good eggs because of it.  However this morning (4-1-04) she is in Ovaposition (see photo above) and the eggs look good from this angle  UPDATE: The eggs were carefully candled while avoiding the female's teeth!  The few eggs I could check were fertile! I will let this female hatch these eggs maternally and hope to see some little babies in 50+ days!

UPDATE: 4/15/04 - I checked on the female the other day and carefully used a tube to protect my hands and face from her teeth while I observed her eggs.  They looked good and white but there was one bad one on the very top.  I have heard of bad eggs sometimes causing other eggs to go bad and so I didn't want to take any chances with this one.  Perhaps (some would say) I am insane for removing a incubating female from her eggs just to pull one egg, but I have had success pulling her in the past from her eggs with the 90% of the eggs hatching afterwards.  She just recoils around the egg mass and goes back to work.  She is a great momma snake.  Above you can see the photos from the little egg pulling adventure.  I will be keeping my eye on her to make sure she recoils well over the eggs and pretty much leave her alone from here on out.  Just wanted to share a little breeding season action! Special thanks to my husband Mitch for his help documenting this while I work with the snake.  

UPDATE: 4/25/04 - The female had recoiled and looked great the last few weeks.  I checked her once again and this time I smelled more rotten eggs.  So today I decided to pull her again to remove the bad ones.  See photos above of the process.  The end result was 8 bad eggs, all of which were fertilized but had died some time back.  The other eggs were candled and found to be still fertile, so I put the female back and will wait to see if she recoils again.  If not, I have an incubator ready to finish the female's job.  She has been stressed quite a bit during this incubation, but I felt it was in the best interest of the eggs to remove the bad ones.  

UPDATE: 5/10/04 - Once again I checked on the female after leaving her alone for over a week.  I used my paper towel roll to move her head so I could see the eggs inside her coils.  She had more bad eggs visible and so I decided to pull her off and remove them.  As I started to remove her completely, I noticed that on her upper neck she had a "cheesy growth" from where the bad eggs had been touching her skin.  This was my catalyst to make me decide to remove her altogether from the incubation and place them in an incubator for the remainder of the process.  Once I got her off, I removed 5 more bad fertilized eggs from the clutch.  Then I set them up in my waiting Hovabator at 31.5 - 31.7 C for this week.  Next week I will drop this temp to 31.0 C to reduce the heat provided as the babies will be hatching soon and are creating their own heat.  Hopefully I will avoid any full term dead babies.  There are still 19 eggs cooking (see photos above) which means since I removed 9 before and 5 this time she laid a total of 33 eggs this season.  There are several eggs that have bad looking spots on them and I am not sure if they will survive but at least I have a little more access to them instead of harassing the female each time.  They are also sunken in quite a bit.  I have decided to just wait and see if they cave in any more.  Right now the humidity is at 75% in the incubation box so I am hoping this will be enough.  Of course I will be updating this page as more information develops.  Keep your fingers crossed that the eggs survive!

 UPDATE: 5/17/04 -  Since I moved the eggs from the female into the incubator, I have been checking their progress several times a day.  On 5/15/04 I pulled one egg that had died.  It's shell was "wet-looking" and smelled horrible.  I opened it up and there was a small neonate that was still moving slightly but the yolk was completely hard and rotten.  The baby hadn't developed any pigment but looked otherwise fully formed.  Today (5/17/04) I decided to pull the next four eggs that had died and open them up. Once again, Mitch was my photographer and helped document this ordeal.  There were two yellows and two maroons in these eggs.  Two of them had died not long after the other one I pulled on 5/15.  They were still small with a large amount of yolk left.  They had developed some pigment but not much.  Their heads were tiny and still blunt.  Both were dead.  The other two were much further along when they died as their bodies were seemingly perfect and they both had quite a bit of pigment.  But again, both had very hard and rotten yolks.  You can see the dark yellow yolk in the photos above.   14 eggs remain and there are only three days left before day 50.  I am hopeful for the remaining eggs.  Several of them are still white and seem to be alive.  Since these babies made it most of the way, it seems possible the good looking eggs could have viable babies still to hatch.

UPDATE: 5/19/04 - After removing the bad eggs several more eggs were starting to look "wet" and smell very bad.  But much to my surprise last night, one maroon baby had pipped and one yellow baby was trying to also.  The little yellow baby later drowned and as of right now, there are only five eggs alive.  One has crawled out and I am keeping a very close eye on the rest.  They have been moved to a different shoebox that has paper towel moistened with distilled water and a perch for any babies that crawl out.   Several of the other eggs looked perfect but the babies were just cold and dead in the eggs.  I sort of feared this would happen when I took them away from the female.  But since she was having a bad skin reaction to the bad eggs I decided to pull them in the best interest of the female.  I will keep this page updated as the few remaining babies hatch out.  

Last UPDATE: 5/20/04 - Tonight all the remaining babies (3 yellow and 2 maroon) have climbed out of their eggs and begun perching.  I always love to see how little babies immediately want to sit on a perch just like a perfect adult pose.  I have several theories why the remaining eggs did not make it, but I will chalk it up to a learning experience and try to improve for next time.  Thanks to everyone for their kind emails and words of encouragement.  Special thanks to Trooper Walsh and Tracy Barker for their incubation set-up advice and husbandry skills shared.