This year we have paired up our big snow girl, Pearl, with our normal Aztec boy, Granite, in hopes of finding out if he is het for anerythristic, amelanistic, or both. We are also hoping that the pair will throw out a few hatchlings with some good aztec'ing pattern.

We had expected to have eggs on the ground sometime back in April. However, Pearl knew her job better then we did and she began laying her clutch during the early morning hours on 5/10/07. By 7PM she'd dropped a good 13 eggs without incident. That was when we ran into a slight emergency as Pearl prolapsed around a stuck slug. Quick thinking, level heads, and good advice from fellow breeders helped us to help Pearl get through the rough spots and she went on to lay 4 more eggs in addition to the slug we helped remove; 2 were laid during the trauma and 2 were laid successfully afterwards.

The final 2 eggs were laid on 5/13/07 and on 5/16/07, both appear to be good eggs and have been placed in the incubator beside the rest of the clutch. Now, we'll focus entirely on Pearl's recovery, and pray that she doesn't double clutch. We have also decided, due to the minor prolapse and subsequint delay in laying the final 2 eggs, that Pearl will be retired from our breeding stock. She will always have a place in our hearts and in our home as a treasured pet.

On 7/18/07 it was discovered that Pearl had gone on to double clutch. We had hoped that this would not happen given the problems she had with her first clutch of the year. Thankfully she had been steadily gaining weight and recovering very well from her ordeal back in May and we are hoping that this second clutch will present no problems. We expect the eggs to be dropped any day now, as her pre-lay shed occured on 7/14/07. The second clutch of 9 eggs was laid on 7/23/07, only 2 eggs appear to be fertile the remaining 7 were all slugs.

Neither of the two apparently fertile eggs that were laid in the second clutch survivied to hatch.

If you are intersted in reading more about the problems that we had with Pearl's first clutch, you can read about it here.

Thank you,

ACR# 4425
2004 Snow Corn
Female (Breeder Unknown)
Hets: Unknown

ACR# 4427
2005 Normal Aztec
Male from PetCo
Hets: Unknown

Initial breeding: 03/11/07