I'M A DADDY!!!

Well, perhaps a granddaddy, since the mother and father of these were my babies when I bought them 4 years ago.

Because I bought the two at the same time from the same store, I'm assuming they are brother and sister and figure it's not a good idea to breed the offspring together.

The first one hatched is named Katie. I was seriously concerned for her health. Alexandria, the mother, laid 10 eggs, but one was not viable. The eggs were all stuck together quite firmly, so I made no attempt to separate them, not wanting to risk damaging the good eggs.

One day I discovered that the 'bad egg' had apparently drawn the attention of a fruit fly because there was larvae crawling around it and seemed to have gotten through to the one next to it as well, as it was now 'dimpled'. In my attempt to remove the 'bad egg' and the now damaged one, I inadvertently nicked the side of one of the other eggs (Katie's). I cleaned the area as best I could and tried using Krazy Glue to seal the nick in the egg.

For a couple weeks everything seemed to be working fine, but because the egg was growing, it broke again at the edge of the glued area. I kept the egg clean, but it did not seem to be growing any more as the other 7 remaining ones were. I prayed and attributed this to the fact that it did not have the pressure in the egg any more because of the rupture. I took extra good care of it, hoping it would be all right, but became less and less optimistic as time went on.

Shortly before midnight on August 1st I noticed some splits had formed in other parts of the egg as I was checking them before heading to bed. I took a couple pictures before crawling into bed. Not sleeping well, I got up about 0315 and checked again, finding a little head peeking out. When I checked back again about 6 hours later (seemed like an eternity) she was completely out of her egg and another one had pipped!

Katie seems to be a very healthy young snow corn and I'm quite happy for that. So far, they're coming out one a day. The rest of the eggs all look quite healthy, so I'm not worried any more. The stress is over and I'm looking forward to 5 more to join the 3 that are already out. I'm not sure about keeping all 8 yet, but at this point I hate the thought of parting with any of my first clutch.

Erik

Addendum: 07 August 2005: All 8 eggs hatched. All 8 babies appear to be healthy and doing fine.