Posted by:
boaphile
at Thu May 17 11:22:07 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by boaphile ]
I have gone back and forth. The first five years or so I always removed the babies, cleaned them up, and set them up in a heated rack. Never had any problems with "Solidified Yolk Syndrome" at that time. I had problems with babies that were just weak and died occasionally. The smaller ones that had the larger yolk still outside the body, but not so much now as I just leave them in the cages till they disperse on their own. I attribute this to he inevitable additional bleeding that occurs if you just leave them alone in the cage. When a large yolk is still attached, there is a large blood vessel going to that yolk. It is very easy for new born babies to bleed to death after rupturing this vessel. God designed a better way of taking care of this, and I cannot improve upon it. So as much as possible, I let Mom decide where they get delivered and leave them alone until they are for sure doing very well, and no longer needing the heat.
Then I heated a room for younger Boas and after removing entire litters and setting them up in large tubs after cleaning them up, I would have the "Solidified Yolk Syndrome" sometimes killing babies. The babies do a perfectly good job cleaning themselves up except in the unusual circumstance where they get mashed around in a bunch of yolk from neighboring slugs. That should be cleaned off or it will dry on them leaving them less mobile that normal babies and making it really difficult to shed that first skin.
Many folks have always set up their babies in heated racks and never seen "Solidified Yolk Syndrome". But I have and since I now heat my baby room to 85 degrees without heating the racks, I cannot, as a rule, remove the babies from the birth cage and move them into the room. However, I have set up one ten drawer sweater rack that has a double thermostat set up on it with the back heat temperature set to 92 degrees that I can and do use on occasion. Sometimes I don't have the extra cage to move the mother into or for some other reason I must remove the mother and in those cases, the babies go into that heated rack. Here is an example of one of those situations where I had "Pearlescent" babies and non-Pearlescents from the same litter loaded into that heated rack. They did not have the big bellies but I set them up in the heated rack just to be safe. I removed them from the cage because, I admit it, I just couldn't wait to get my mitts on them! See them pushed up against the front staying away from the heat? If they had the big bellies, they would be back at the rear at the heat.
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A little additional information: - boaphile, Thu May 17 11:22:07 2007