Laying photos - caught in the act!

[pythonmum]

I've been going crazy waiting for her to lay, which I expected Sunday night. She finally got going at 6am:





By this time she was getting sick of the flashes and I had to go to work:


I came home ASAP to find 15 perfect eggs (average mass 44.2g)


All are in the incubator now.


I incubate over water on perlite.
I will be resting this girl next year, but she is a real champion. In four clutches, she has had only 1 slug and only 1 egg has died. The clutch with the dead egg had a twin egg, which made up for the loss.

 

[killacoastal8u]

Congrats that would be good to watch and hopefully you get the full clutch


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[Kurtis]

Nice catch, would of been amazing to see firsthand.

How big is your girl? My avg size was 56 grams.

 

[Ephemera]

She is gorgeous; I hope for your sake all of them come out healthy!

 

[Bushman]

Congrats on your healthy looking clutch. You're ~halfway there.
It's always good to be there when they lay. Nice pics too.

 

[Chris1]

Great shot with the egg half way out, it would be awesome to watch!!

...pretty spot on with the timing too,....!!

 

[Grogshla]

wow how exciting! Lovely snake and beautiful eggs!

 

[pythonmum]

Thanks everyone. She did let out some hisses of effort while the contractions were occurring. Poor thing - I sympathise! Average egg size was only 44.2g. Her depleted body mass is 1.95kg, so not terribly big. I'll be making an effort to get more size on her for the next two years before breeding again. She's such a lovely girl. I can never believe it when she doesn't try to bite me while I take her eggs. She just desperately tries to hold onto them with her tail, poor girl. She has had a bath and has had a cage swap with her mate so that there is no egg smell around until she settles down. I'll try feeding her in a couple of days.

 

[Bushman]

Sounds like she's in good hands. All the best with the rest.

 

[cement]

Nice!!

Isn't it hard to beleive that, even though she seems like she's suffered and has lost weight etc, she could easily incubate that clutch herself, converting more body weight into energy, not feeding, with bouts of thermogenisis...

The wild female diamonds I find in late Feb, March, that have obviously bredd that year are literally ravenous bags of bone. She will be fine, no worries.

Is that mesh in the egg tub to stop hatchlings from getting down into the water when they start hatching?

 

[orientalis]

Hi Susan,

Congrats on your clutch and all the best with incubation!

Cheers
Mick

 

[hunterschamps]

Very nice! Beautiful looking girl.

How do you go about seperating the eggs once laid and stuck together? I have heard it can be a difficult process..

 

[pythonmum]

Hi Cement. Yes, the metabolic efficiency of snakes amazes me. The fact that her mate has only lost 10% of his body mass despite fasting since mid April and prowling for females is another impressive feat. I know she could incubate them, but I don't want to put her through that!
The mesh is a safety measure for hatchings, but not necessary because I move them to a container with damp newspaper as soon as one pips. It is more useful for keeping the perlite on top of the upside down cutlery rack that they are sitting on, rather than dribbling through into the water.

hi hunterschamps. You can gently pull the eggs apart if you get to them relatively soon. They had been laid less than 4 hours when I separated them. If you are gentle about it and apply equal pressure to both sides, it is okay. However, I don't trust anyone else in the family to do it for me and they don't want to, either.