Ball pythons are amazing!  The female ball python that produced these eggs started out at the beginning of the breeding season weighing 4400 grams.  For eight months she ate only three very small meals.  During gestation she slowly transferred 1600 grams of her body weight into this clutch of 12 eggs.  After she laid the eggs, she weighed 2750 grams.  In other words, she managed this huge reproductive effort and only burned about 50 grams of body weight to do it.  50 grams is only the size of an adult mouse.  What efficiency!

Each of these ball python eggs weighed over 130 grams.  According to "The Ball Python Manual", in a section authored by Dave and Tracy Barker, the average egg size is only 86 grams.  So not only did this female produce roughly twice as many ball python eggs as breeders usually get, but each egg was also much larger than the average ball python egg.

When these 12 eggs hatched, each baby ball python weighed around 90 grams. That's about 50% heavier than the average captive hatchling.  These baby ball pythons were as big at hatching time as the average baby ball python that has already been eating regularly for a least a month!