Feeding Babies

 While there are still a couple holdouts from my first clutch of 2025. Most of the babies are now eating, thankfully. Eastern kingsnakes can be hard to get started, but in my experience, once they get going there is no slowing them down. I may be biased, but these are just some of the coolest animals ever. I just can't get enough of these babies. Some have a lot of red in their chain pattern while others are mostly yellow and black. 

As fun as they are to work with, I have to admit the ones that are refusing food so far frustrate the hell out of me. For them the next steps will be trying to scented pinkies. I will try the age old tricks. One of the easiest scenting methods I know of is to soak the pinks in the water from a can of tuna fish. Don't ask me why it works, but it is often all you need. I suspect it has something to do with the snakes having an innate fear of rodents when they are this size. If you think about it, an adult mouse could easily ruin one of these baby kingsnake's day. 

I have heard many folks like to also drop the pinkies in a cup of boiling water. I have personally never used this method, but I am not above giving it a try if other ways do not work. I also have a large population of skinks running around in my yard. I have contemplated trying to capture one or two to use for scenting purposes as well. At any rate getting these babies going is always an adventure and sometimes you have to get creative.

I'm still awaiting the second clutch of the year to hatch. This one is super exciting too. Hoping we get a couple of lavender hybino mosaics as that is one of the sweetest combos in Florida kingsnakes if you ask me.

Still Waiting for Hatclings

 My female eastern kingsnake laid eggs on May 2, 2025. She is het albino and was paired with my het albino male. I've been keeping an eye on the eggs and patiently awaiting them to pip. It has been 66 days so they should be coming out any day now. Some of these eggs have unfortunately went bad. But there is still a good number which appear to be doing just fine. The female I call Hestia, has been putting weight back on and is looking to be in great shape. I am planning on a repeat pairing of Hestia and Apollo in 2026.

She laid 18 eggs. Some I could tell were duds right out of the gate. A couple others have now molded and deflated so appear to have failed as well. But there is still over a dozen that look okay up to this point. I do feel like she laid this clutch a little early. The eggs were quite small, and still had the little filament connecting them similar to a string of pearls. The eggs were more round than I usually see with my Florida kings. For now, all I can do is keep the incubator temperatures consistent and wait. Breeding snakes is not for the impatient. There is a lot of waiting involved. But to say I am eager to see the hatchlings is an understatement. So much time and work has gone into this clutch of eastern kingsnakes. I simply can't wait to see if this clutch beats the odds. Hoping we end up with at least a couple albino eastern kingsnakes out of this one. 

There are two more clutches cooking as well. These two are from Florida kingsnakes. So far all the eggs in both Florida king clutches are looking good. Fingers crossed they all make it to term. Fingers crossed on both hands that we beat the odds and get some killer looking morphs from these. I didn't include any photos in this post because I have already posted photos of these clutches. This was just an update on how things are going so far.