So this is my second blog entry, and figured I’d go back to the beginning of my breeding adventure. It started in 2011 with animals I purchased in 2008. I cannot remember which animal was born in 2007, and which one was born in 2006. The female I named pandora, and the male Lestat, yes I like Anne Rice, and no I won’t name children after book characters, animals are fair game tho! So the breeding took place in 2010 on Christmas Day. I was cage cleaning and threw Lestat in with Pandora for convenience, cleaned the cage and had a buddy stop by and we talked for 45 minutes or so. When I came back in I went to pull lestat out of her cage and got bit. Lestat was locked up with Pandora and did not want to be bothered. I left them alone the rest of the day, and the next day they had separated and I was able to place Lestat back in his cage. That was 12/26/10. She ovulated in late February, and layed eggs in mid March. Here are pics of my first carpet pythons. 
Always the love birds!!
Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of the ensuing nightmare as evidence. So eggs were layed in mid march, I had no incubator set up cause these guys are pythons and incubate their own eggs, right? Wrong! She lasted a week, left the eggs. I waited a few days before pulling them just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. She did not return to her eggs. At this point I freaked, I had not set up an incubator because I’m stupid! So I went and bought a huvabator styrofoam incubator, which was an awful, awful, awful, did I mention awful, Idea! I wrapped the eggs in moist sphagnum moss and placed them in the incubator. They went, and I’m serious, all the way up to 95-98, before I finally got it stabilized at 88-90. The lesson, make sure, no matter what, that if eggs are going to be on the ground, the incubator needs to be up and running for at least a week prior to the eggs being layed! Learn from my mistakes!
About half way through the 60 day incubation, I lost my house and moved in with my girl friend (now wife). Sometime during the week it took to make the move, power was lost at my old house and the eggs stayed at 60-65 degrees for an unknown amount of time. It was at least 24-36 hours, the eggs were super cold when I got to them. After moving them, getting the incubator re established and stabilized they were at sub par temps for 2-4 days. And I still got a 70% hatch rate!! The babies were the second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!
That’s my first ever experience breeding snakes! At least one that resulted in offspring!!
Here is a baby from that first clutch! Thank you Facebook for remembering things I didn’t!
