Family Portraits

The Fine Green Tree Pythons Family Portraits Archive

Hold your mouse on the image to see the parents, click to see the full size image. I produced my first clutch of chondros in 1997, from a sire and dam I had purchased as yearlings several years previously. The female was "Joan Collins", a fiery-tempered sibling of Trooper Walsh's "Powder". Both females were hormonal blue and are now deceased. There were fourteen maroon babies in this clutch, and all ate well for me. The image shows some of the babies set up in their plastic shoe boxes using real wood twigs for perches. I laugh now to see how far chondro breeding and photography has come! When I bred this pair, there was virtually no information available on breeding or incubation. These babies helped to ease the sting of losing an entire clutch of artificially incubated calico eggs that year...my first attempt at producing that morph. 1998 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on the image to see the parents, click to see the full size image. In 1998, sire "Barnose" fathered his first clutch with an OS female from high yellow ancestry. The little keeper shown here developed into a very attractive but snappy male named "SOB" (son of Barnose) which I eventually sold. This maternally incubated clutch produced fourteen babies, mostly maroon. 1999 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. 1999 began as a banner year, with six females producing clutches containing at least some fertile eggs, including the first-ever babies from my Calico male and also from my Lemon Tree female, Lilly. I enjoyed two 100% hatches with the Blue Diamond and Joan Collins clutches. Sadly, 1999 also included some disappointments as well as an outright disaster. First, a power outage during the final week of artificial incubation resulted in the loss of much of the Lilly clutch. Then, the thermostat on my brooding incubator stuck on, killing all the eggs in the Original Green clutch. Finally, I lost almost twenty babies from four bloodlines in May, June, and July due to a mysterious toxin that caused massive liver damage. The symptoms were consistent with poisoning from an insecticide such as flea medication, but the true source has never been proved. Needless to say, those were dark days for me, after having begun the year so well. But I learned some valuable lessons from each setback. The losses resulted in very few yearlings being offered in 2000, as I added most of those that survived to my breeding stock. The good news is that they all turned out to be very attractive animals, and a few are truly high-end. These include the second known calico male, Calico Junior, as well as two high yellow females, Grace and Chiquita. 2000 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. The new Millennium started off slowly after 1999's boom crop of six clutches, with a couple of false pregnancies as well as some uninterested pairs. The result was only one clutch of three Lilly babies hatching by the end of May. (One of these is the spectacular high yellow male "Switch", later purchased by Jack Sadovnik.) Several breeder females were given the year off or had a late start in cycling due to the 1999 successes. However, two more clutches hatched in the fall. Seven babies were hatched in September, and a clutch of thirteen hatched in late October - all in all, not a bad year. 2001 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. I experienced a great year in 2001, with healthy babies being hatched from four different clutches. Major excitement came with the April calico clutch. Buttermilk finally saw her second clutch of babies hatch after several attempts and surgery on a blocked bowel, and a small but very valuable clutch of babies were produced from blue parents. The big disappointment for the year was Lilly failing to produce good eggs in late December. Several new breeders were acquired for the collection this year including a Lemon tree male and an outstanding pair of wild caught Aru types, as well as some choice babies from Walsh and Goetzger clutches. The future looks bright! 2002 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. 2002 began with an outstanding little clutch of Biak outcross offspring that hatched in March. A second clutch of 6 blue mite phase babies hatched in August, one of which was Darth Maul (cover boy for The More Complete Chondro, 2005). Several high end pairs failed to produce offspring this year, including the big disappointment of the year, slugs from Aquaman x My Song. I did not have as much time as usual to devote to breeding this year, due to my writing and photography schedule for my first book, The Complete Chondro. 2003 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. The year began with the production of two large clutches, nineteen and twenty-two eggs respectively. Both were sired by high-end, unproven males and both contained all yellow offspring - an unusual occurrence for me. A special event followed, the hatching of five Aru type babies from the only pair of wild-collected parents in my breeding collection. Characteristic of Arus, the babies were yellow also. I proclaimed this The Summer of Gold! 2004 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. An outstanding year for high end chondro production at Fine GTPs, with almost 60 babies produced and the third generation of calicos to hatch. Also of note: The Pepper clutch, sired by the cousin of the Salceies albino and which produced the stunningly beautiful "Ella-Diablo". The two larger clutches represent some of the best selectively bred specialty morph chondros to have been hatched anywhere in the world to date, and elevated Fine GTPs to the forefront of the breeding of high end chondros. 2005 Clutch photos and data
Hold your mouse on any image to see the parents, click to see the full size image and clutch data. Severe early winter storms had a noticeable positive effect on chondro breeding in the mid west during the 2005 breeding period. The first clutch was laid in early December, two more were deposited in January, another in February, and two final clutches were laid in March. Although a couple pairs produced small clutches, over sixty babies were hatched, making this another good year for production of selectively bred chondros from multiple bloodlines and morphs.