461. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 5 # 4).

Just managed to get piccy of this pair before the the quality of daylight dipped for today. Both this pair are both good sized animals and the female is always reliable and copes well with the strains of breeding. The lighter one is mackpuzzle our male Mack enigma. The female is a fairly pale hypo called Patio.

460. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 5 # 3).

This is the fourth bunk up of the year for our African fatso Nelson. He is the albino in the piccy. His mate that we have paired him up with today is Tulu who is a very attractive wild type stripe. Whilst African fatsos are often tempermental when it comes to breeding, with us only producing one baby last year, we have got our fingers crossed for more this time around.

459. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 5 # 2).

Pictured are another pair we have just put together in the last few minutes. Lighter one is D-ream our male dreamsickle, though we might add he have still not got any offspring off him yet to prove his morph credentials. That said he is a fine looking specimen and will surtey contaminate some of his gennes and looks into any offspring he does produce. Hence the reason he is doing stud duties on this ocassion with our fairly plain hypo called Balti.

458. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (Round 5 # 1).

As round five implies its fifth time of asking for Einstien to perform his stud duties in 2013. He is the big bruiser of a Bell with a bit of broad strip on his shoulder in the piccy. On this occasion he is perfoming his stud duties with the petite Gravitas and Bell sunglow, and we think also a bit of enigma. We say petite as she is coming up for 2 years old and has never been over 55 gram. Breeding smaller stock always raises concerns but Leos are considered as adult at around 18 months of age. Therefore we have concluded Gravitas is naturally small and achived full size.

457. Pre Easter 2013 breeding report.

Currently we have two healthy hatchlings. We also had another that died during the process of hatching a few days back. So in comparison to this time last year with our two hatchlings we are in an identical postion. Our next hatches are expected in about 14 days time after which the rate of hatch should pick up considerably with the possibility of 25-30 hatches in April 2013. our total number of good eggs this season to date was at 57 this morning. We have also had a few slugs to add to the overall total of eggs produced this season.

456. Silver medalist for being second hatch of the seaon.

This is the sibling of Chucky egg pictured in post 454. Keeping with our theme we have given him/her the name of Toblerone. She/he hatched out yesterday (25/03/2013) a couple hours after Chucky egg. Both are estimated at about 2 gram. Parents are Poppy and Dinkum.

455. Hatchling names for 2013

Rather than an impersonal number we always like to give all our hatchlings a name. Last year our naming theme was the Olympics and Greek mythology. For this year we are using a theme of food and drink to name or babes. Hence, the name of Chucky egg given to our first hatchling of 2013 who is pictured in the previous post.

454. And the winner is ?

The gold medal award for the first hatchling of 2013 goes to Chucky egg who we have got pictured here. After a 55 day incubation she/he decided to crack the egg this afternoon (25/03/2013). Sadly we did have another hatchling yesterday but it was found dead and blue half in and half out of the egg. Sad but that is the way of nature. As for chucky egg she is sired by Dinkum a broad stripe with shades of red. From the look of the patterns on chucky egg looks like the broad stripe might have been passed on.

453. meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 4 # 5).

Today (15/03/2013) we have paired Pivot, the chunky common Macularius Macularius in the piccy, with Kabul our 1oo% pure Afghanicus. kabul is the smaller one with the typical rugged looks and horizontal head bars associated with the Afghanicus sub species. hoping for a nice bit of cross fertilisation.

452. 2013 breeding season - progress report.

We are generally quite pleased at where we currently are in comparison to previous seasons. As of today we have paired up 38 females and have harvested 42 good eggs which are in the incubator. Add to that that we have had a few slugs and maky eggs we reckon we had had about 50 overall. As of today our oldest eggs (29/01/2013) are 43 days into incubation. One is definitely sinking in the middle as a result of movement and expected to hatch very soon. Last year our incubation periods were somewhere in the region of 42 to 50 days. As we are incubating at the same temperature 29 degrees Celcius)we should get similar this time around. Might also add that in the UK we have had some unseasonal cold weather of late which is probably slowing down the rate of egg laying. One particular pleasing piece of news is that we got a superb clutch of African fatso eggs from an albino pair earlier in the week. Being that African fatsos can be tempermental when it comes to breeding it is always nice to get some good quality eggs. The weather is forecasty to become much warmer by the weekend. If so we are expecting a massive increase in egg production from now on.

451. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 4 # 4).

Fourth round of stud duties for Rip Rap our resident RAPTOR. For this match up we have put him with Whitey who is a blizzard. Might have been better to call her Greyie as she is a dark blizzard AKA midnight blizzard. Not too sure exactly what to expect from this pairing as we don't know what Whitey's base or het genes are. We are hoping she has some Tremper in her so that we might get the same from this pairing. Only one way to find and that is to wait for any offspring in about 10 - 11 weeks time. That being that these two darlings get it on with the minimum of fuss.

450. Meet the parents 2013 (round 4 # 3).

Here we have another pairing made in heaven. They were put together last week 05/03/2013. Both are Bell's and the larger big bruiser is Einstein. For his fourth round of stud duties he is covering Drill bit who is the smaller of the two. That said she weighed in at 66 gram last week so she is a fairly sturdy girl.

449. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 4 # 2)

More potential Mack combos on the horizon from these two lovelys who we have paired up this afternoon (02/03/2013). The light coloured Mack enigma is Macpuzzle. Getting it on with him in this engagement is Mackdonna who was a distinct jungle pattern as a baby and Juvenile. She has also got a high quantity of spots. hence we are hoping for some really interesting patterns from this combination if all goes well.

448. Meet the parents for the 2013 breeding season (round 4 # 1).

Today (02/03/2013) marks the fourth round of passionate lovemaking for D-ream the dreamsicle. He is the lighter coloured one in the piccy. This time around he has been paired up with Maggie a Mack Snow who has produced us some superb babies in the last few years.