Northern Mexican Pines

[Russell]

Northern Mexican Pines aka Jani, which is a shortened name of their scientific name. And my personal feeling is, their common name is very wrong, as these are not Pine snakes at all! Certainly in the Pituophis family, but closer in line with gopher snakes than our Pine snakes. The head is off, they don't have the enlarged rostral scale, and these guys only have two prefrontal scales instead of four. Ok, enough about taxonomy!

I used to have three pairs of these guys, but I couldn't get eggs to hatch for the life of me. And then this year I put them in on the hatchrite and ignored them. And amazingly, two clutches hatched! And I already got rid of the two pairs...gah! So for whatever reason all my Pituophis group did very well on hatchrite. So next year for THEM I'll use hatchrite again. But for whatever reason, for me, corn eggs didn't always hatch well.

So, although I've got two picked out as keepers at this time, I really don't expect to keep any of them. One pair of adults is enough. But this bunch is looking nicer with each shed. Now mind you, they are called ugly ducklings of the snake world as what they hatch out as is no resemblance to the end result! But the thing is you don't know how ANY of these guys will end up as! The nicest looking one now might not be the nicest looking one two years from now!

It makes me wish I could raise them all up for three years and then sell. But I've already proven that people WANT hatchlings not yearlings! Anyhow, here are pictures of eight of the nine. One was in shed. And yes, they recently got fed, which I hoped would slow them down for pictures as they are very nervous as youngsters. Usually... One never moved more than his head for his session! He was happy to stay coiled up and even let me move him over a bit for a better angle! Unlike one of his brothers who was totally spazzing out, FLYING out of his container, across the table, out onto the floor and...oops, an angry hand grasped him and plopped him back into his container...escape attempt foiled!

And out of this batch of nine, from two diff clutches, I ended up with a whopping TWO females... And everyone wants...females... A wicked part of me wants to charge 200 for females and much less for the males... We'll see what happens. As it is, IF, and that's a BIG IF! If I keep one female, the other is already sold to a friend to help him finish a deal for another friend. Oh the tangled webs we weave!

And then, sadly, the prettiest one currently, the last picture shown, has some neurological thing going on. Cause though he eats great, and does totally fine otherwise. He's kind of like a sunkissed stargazer, except he never flips, he just does this weird jiggling around like he can't decide what direction to take off in and his body shakes every which way till he figures out what general direction he wants to take flight in. I feel bad for him cause, here's a perfect looking Jani, and he's never refused a meal, but he's slightly defective upstairs... *sigh* So now I'm torn as to what to do. He's way too big for my Mexican Black Kings to handle. And I could TRY to sell him as a pet only.

But I've tried the pet only scenario! And you know what? People will make their own decisions! They snicker on the great deal they've gotten and do whatever they can to make snakes reproduce anyway! I've seen it a few times! It's the reason I don't feel sorry for the slightly kinked babies that you normally think, oh we'll sell them cheap as a pet. People see those cheap as pet babies as a cheap way to get what they want and breed them anyway! Why should I put the same effort into normal and kinked babies, only to practically GIVE away kinked ones at the show... And be stuck with the nice normal ones that I could have made MORE money on and now have to wholesale for nothing? Kingsnake food! Those poor kings are STUFFED! I am now only down to what eats well. So they get a break till next year! Yes, in breeding one MUST be ruthless! Mother nature is many times worse than we could ever be!

Ok, onto the pictures. Someone got their long post they were waiting for...LOL!

[Mysterry]

I for one like your long posts Russell. They are very informative along with entertaining. Cource if i could only rememeber what i have read it would be great. I believe it was a_god_s that was gonna go look for your long post. lol
You had said they change so much from hatchling to baby. Do they stay the same colours? They are pretty and congrads on the hatchlings.