Wild Florida, located 15 minutes south of St. Cloud, Florida, is the home to 19 Albino Alligator eggs! That makes Wild Florida home to the world’s first successful albino alligator breeding program in the world!
On June 7th, Wild Florida owner Sam Haught and the “Croc Squad” announced the exciting news to the world, that they had discovered 19 alligator eggs in a nest inside Blizzard’s and Snowflake’s albino alligator exhibit!
Wild Florida became Blizzard and Snowflake’s home in May of 2017 making them the first pair of breeding albino alligators in Central Florida and one of the few places in the world where visitors can see these rare animals. A lack of melanin in their skin is what causes them, to be completely white and sensitive to the sunlight, so the Wild Florida team built a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled exhibit with plenty of shade during the Florida days and a heating lamp to keep them comfortable in their new home at night.
According to the staff at Wild Florida, they began noticing Snowflake building a nest and behaving differently, becoming more defensive inside the climate-controlled exhibit. “Defensive meaning she is being a good mom, she is guarding her nest and essentially her future, the babies.”
After discovering the eggs Wild Florida made the decision to extract them from the exhibit for a number of reasons. Natural predators like fire ants, snakes, and raccoons could threaten the eggs, so to protect these rare and fragile baby alligators, they were moved to an incubator until they hatch. Another key reason that the eggs were removed is that both Blizzard and Snowflake are blind and would not be able protect them from potential predators.
When the eggs hatch ,Wild Florida will continue to care for the baby alligators and has no plans of bringing them into the exhibit with Blizzard and Snowflake for their own safety. Baby alligators, in general, are very delicate and the “daddy” alligator, Blizzard, would likely be territorial and could potentially kill them. The baby alligators skin will certainly be very sensitive, so keeping them out of the harmful sun’s rays and properly cared for by the highly trained staff at Wild Florida is the plan.
On average it takes about 60 days for alligator eggs to hatch so be on the lookout for more updates on the progress of the 19 newest Wild Florida members. Congratulations Snowflake, Blizzard and the entire Wild Florida family on the success of their breeding program!
