Posted by:
Jeff Clark
at Wed Aug 6 18:25:05 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Jeff Clark ]
Aubrey,
...As has already been posted look at ALL the variables in your husbandry to try to figure out the problem. I have been in similar situations after years with lots of slugs and lower percentages of healthy babies. It was always difficult trying to figure out if my temperatures were either too low or too high or I cooled them for too short a time or for too long etc.
...It does sound like mostly your problems have to do with incubating eggs. I have had my share of failures their also. I have opened hundreds of good eggs and hundreds of failed eggs over the years just to learn about the developement of baby snakes while in the egg. Your similar bad results with different species is probably key to finding the problem. First thing I would look at is your incubation medium. After that look at incubation medium moisture content and probably lastly at incubation temperatures. Temperatures are the one item of incubation that is probably easiest to measure and so the assumption would be that it would not be the problem but look at how temperature is maintained and also measured in your incubator. I have heard of incubators that were very expensive and sophisticated looking with really lousy thermostats.
....BRBs that should be gravid and look and act gravid when they are not are so common that you probably have nothing to worry about there. Try more males in the breeding attempts next year and fiddle with temperature a little and you may get the females gravid next year.
Better luck for next year,
Jeff
>>Well, this was the bad ending to a horrible breeding season. I manually hatched my last Pueblan Milksnake egg since it was long overdue. The baby was a beautiful Halloween that looked very much like it's daddy, but it was horribly deformed. Severely kinked all over, and an underdeveloped head. It was sort of alive when I pulled it from the egg, but it didn't live much longer.
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>>This has just been a terrible year for me. I've had at least 100 eggs, but only 15 of them were fertile. Of the 15, I've had 2 fatally deformed, 3 kinked tails, and 8 non or extremely stubborn feeders. The remaining 2 were just fine from the start. And now it looks like my "gravid" BRB may not be gravid after all.
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>>Wish me better luck for next year.
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>>-----
>>Aubrey Ross
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>>©
>>www.SlipstreamSerpents.com
[ Hide Replies ]
- OT - My First Halloween Baby - Graphic - waspinator421, Wed Aug 6 13:03:42 2008
- RE: OT - My First Halloween Baby - Graphic - Miloradovich, Wed Aug 6 14:29:24 2008
- Sorry to hear that... - rainbowsrus, Wed Aug 6 14:59:11 2008
- RE: OT - My First Halloween Baby - Graph - gfx, Wed Aug 6 15:22:37 2008
 RE: OT - My First Halloween Baby - Graphic - Jeff Clark, Wed Aug 6 18:25:05 2008- RE: OT - My First Halloween Baby - Graph - natsamjosh, Wed Aug 6 20:19:00 2008
- That's so sad, Aubrey! - ReneeValois, Wed Aug 6 21:55:33 2008
- Chin up - flavor, Thu Aug 7 17:09:58 2008
- So Sorry Hun!! - aanata1, Sat Aug 9 11:58:09 2008
- junk that incubator....... - FRoberts, Sun Aug 10 15:20:44 2008
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