Last weekend saw us add one of our favourite royal morphs to our home - a VPI axanthic female. This girl is another Scottish bred royal, coming from Bob Simpson & Derek Rintoul’s top quality breeding group, and is a delightful little snake.
We’ve named her Blackberry in honour of her rich deep black colouring, and in keeping with our current naming theme.
Today the first baby pipped from Cranberry’s clutch of six eggs, and it looks to be another spider.
I did get to see a bit more of it out of the egg, but it’s a shy wee thing and pulled back into the egg when I went to take photos. Hopefully the other five will pip soon so we can see what we’ve got.
It was feeding night for the majority of the snakes last night - our yearlings are all on a weekly schedule, and the adults all either get fed once a week or once every two weeks, so I tend to feed the youngsters while stan feeds the adults.
The vast majority of the yearlings are a breeze to feed, and strike happily at their food (notably excepting Jacob, who prefers to politely take the food from your hand). Loads were freshly shed and particularly gorgeous looking, Shetland in particular who is gaining the most incredible amounts of delicate pink colouring.
Cranberry, Hussy, and Lingonberry, our royal girls, got fed last night too - they’re getting fed more often than usual at the moment as they’ve all laid recently and are looking a bit skinny. Cranberry and Hussy both laid clutches amounting to 1/3 of their total body weight, so they look exhausted (not that you’d know it from the power of their striking when they feed!). Lingonberry’s clutch was proportionately much smaller, less than 1/5 of her total body weight, so she still looks quite healthy - but while she’s acting hungry, we’ll let her eat!