Meet my new baby snakes!!

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I guess most of you are not familiar with my reptile collection. Well I guess I can show you that later.
But skipping that for now, my female ball python laid eggs May 9. This is her third clutch and I had yet to hatch any eggs from her successfully. Well that lack of success ended last week when my eggs finally hatched!!

They were officially hatched July 15. They breached the eggs on the 14th and emerged the following afernoon.

As you may remember there were 3 eggs, and Egg #2 died about 3 weeks in. Eggs 1 and 3 were successful hatches.

Here is #3 breaching on July 14.


And #1 emerging July 15.


Here are both babies, newly hatched July 15.



Okay....


Now as of today they have both shed their first skin, and have turned out really pretty. The cloudy, drizzly weather today was perfect for pictures, so I took them out and got some shots of them.


First is the little female. She was Egg #3 and the first one out.
Here she is coiled up in my hand....



And on the patio....



Her striking resemblance to Bryon, the dad, has earned her the name "Brianna."

Look at the similarity in their patterns (Brianna left, Bryon right)....


You'll have to forgive Bryon's color.... he is in shed and his coloration very dull and greyish right now. He would normally have a sharper black to gold contrast like his daughter, but not till he sheds in about a week or so. Have sympathy for him -- having his picture taken in shed is about the snake equivalent of you having your picture taken on a bad hair day. Nonetheless you can see how similar their patterns are, father and daughter.

Here they are together, for size comparison. Again, Brianna left, Bryon right.




Okay....

Now the other baby looks NOTHING like either parent. It is a male baby and his name is "Ace" because he was Egg #1.

I have been very worried about Ace because he's had what appears to be a prolapse since hatch. His reproductive organs were wrongside out and protruding from the vent/cloaca, which can be trouble if it doesn't correct itself because these organs are supposed to be internal tissue and thus being exposed will cause harm. Fortunately, the problem does seem to be correcting itself and the tissue is slowly retracting back into his body. I have been allowing the humidity to stay extremely high in order to help keep the tissue from drying out.


Here is Ace coiled up in my hand...



And here he is on the edge of the fish pond.....



And those are the babies, Brianna and Ace.

And now for Bryon's sake, here is a picture of him before he went into shed, when his colors are normal

Poor guy getting dragged into a photo shoot today....

-sssss- i hopessss you don't let them wander too far... Pythons usually coil around prey don't they, wouldn't be good if they brought back a cat or dog ;p .

Where is monty? topic

Cute, but make sure they do not get out at night and into a kid's bedroom.

dont get eaten by them :I

Oh my god those are new hatchlings?? They're huge! I had as a class pet a young cornsnake in middle school and he was itty bitty. Was so cute, he would curl up inside my jacket sleeve (with arm held out horizonally) and take a nap. ^-^ Actually, the last time I saw him, many years later, he was about the size of your hatchlings haha.

Congrats, man

Now I have the Frank Zappa song stuck in my head @_@

AAAAHHHH!! You're killing me Smalls!

You guys act like they're so big!!

They are ball pythons (a.k.a. Python regius) -- the parents are 4 feet and fully grown. They can scarcely take down an adult rat, let alone dogs, cats, and babies. And the hatchlings are around 11 inches. They will start on newborn "pinkie" mice. Also, to keep ball pythons successfully it's critical that their environmental conditions are right -- i.e. temperature and humidity -- and both of those parameters are much too low in the average house to sustain a ball python for very long. Therefore the prudent keeper would, for that reason alone, make certain that their enclosures are secure so that they can remain in the more tropical conditions they need to survive.

You guys are thinking of Burmese pythons (a.k.a. Python molurus). They can reach 15 feet or better and are much more adaptible to temperature and humidity anomalies. It's the Burmese that is becoming naturalized and invasive in Florida, and it is also the one that makes the news for attacking pets and small children.

You mustn't get the two species confused. They are very different.

That has to be the cutest thing I've seen. Look at its beady little eyes and round nose.

Those are the coolest babies that I've ever seen.

Not a huge fan of snakes but your babies are gorgeous. I hope Ace does okay. That picture of Brianna and Bryon side by side is mindboggling- if I didn't know better I would never have guessed they were the same age.

Congratulations on your new pets.

I'm not much of a snake fan but those babies are cute. I hope Ace gets better soon.

Ah, I love snakes!

We breed snakes before when I was still living with my family...It was my dad's obsession

Actually Bryon is the dad. That's why the baby's name is "Brianna" because she looks like a miniature copy of her dad "Bryon." I just took the side-by-side pictures from different distances so they would appear the same size, for ease of pattern comparison.

Ace and Brianna are the siblings.

As much as I am afraid of snakes.....those are pretty adorable...

Do they bite?

Nice! Baby BPs are the cutest! I'd love breed some kind of snakes, but my parents aren't really up for the idea(i live with them). What other reptiles do you have? I don't have all that many reptiles, but a few of them are rather large individuals... So its enough to keep me busy. I wouldn't mind getting a couple more small-ish colubrids or something, though... I've got an amelanistic Corn Snake, a Columbian Boa Constrictor, a Reticulated Python(yes, really), two Leopard Geckos, and an Argentine Black and White Tegu.

The questions some people on here have asked are hilarious! BPs couldn't hurt a person if they tried.. Nothing a bandaid couldn't fix, anyway. And it always makes me laugh when someone says "does it bite?" or even funnier "can it bite?" lol. Well, it has a mouth, doesn't it? How do you think it eats? haha. But i think peoples fears are just irrational when it comes to snakes. If you don't start acting like a complete idiot, even a big constrictor is, in most cases, not going to seriously harm you. I've been bitten by my retic(granted, she isn't full-grown yet. but she's still big by most peoples' standards, and retics have particularly nasty teeth) recently, and even that wasn't all that big of a deal... I stayed calm, didn't rip my arm out of her mouth like a moron would(recurved teeth, people!), and messed with her until she let go on her own. No hospital visit, no stitches, didn't even require a bandage. Some puncture marks and bleeding, but it healed without incident. I even handled her a little longer before i put her up and tended to my wound. Yes, large constrictors can be dangerous and even have the ability to kill people in a lot of cases... But, usually they don't.. Especially when people know what they're doing around them.. So a small or medium sized non-venomous snake is DEFINITELY not something you need to be afraid of. Dogs are much more likely to seriously harm someone. Even when a cat bites someone seriously, they are probably going to need to go get it looked at by a doctor. With a regular sized snake, that's not very likely. Some smaller ones barely even break the skin when they bite you. Same with lizards. I'd gotten accidental gecko bites that i thought were actually kind of funny.