TheOddBall

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I have eggs hatching everyday now with still quite a few to go. One of the clutches that I was really looking forward to was my first of three pied to het pied clutches. Well, last night I was out in the snake building and checked my female het pied. She is maternally incubating her eggs.

In 2012 she produced a very nice high white pied, so I was sure that she would do it again this year. She laid 4 eggs, 2 of which were bad from the get go, so I figured I would get one pied. Fingers crossed.

I was checking to see if the eggs had pipped and to my surprise, one of the babies was completely out of the egg! I did not expect this clutch to pip until this coming weekend, so I was surprised the one had already hatched entirely. These eggs were laid on April 29, 2014, so they hatched after 63 days.

So naturally, since one hatched, I cut the other egg and it was another het pied. It should be out later today and I will know whether it is a male or female. The first one is a female, so no complaining there. I can always use another het pied female on the breeder racks, which is where 90% of the females I produce this year are going.

Anyway. as much as I wanted a pied or two in this clutch, you can’t always run the table. One thing many people do no take into consideration is that a known het pied, or any known het for that matter, could breed to a visual and never produce more visuals. While that is not probable, it is entirely possible.  In this pairing, each egg had a 50% chance of being a pied and a 50% chance of being a het. That applies to each particular egg, not the clutch as one entity.

Last year, I missed on hatching an albino spider from an albino to spider het albino. The female spider het albino is one of the girls I produced in 2010 from my albino female, so the genetics were never in doubt. I just missed the odds. The entire clutch though consisted of spiders het albino.

In 2012, I bred the above mentioned female’s brother, another spider het albino, back to my albino female. I ran the table that time, producing  an entire clutch of albinos with one being an albino spider.

That is how it can go…and you need to be prepared for that happening. It is never dull that is for sure.