I had a relatively late season and currently have my third clutch of the year hatching out. This is my third clutch with a good portion of the babies having some very small kinks or bumps at the end of their tails. So far they all seem to be below the cloaca and none seem to have any other deformities. The first clutch has shed, eaten twice and all appear to be behaving normally.

First clutch was from a normal female bred by multiple males and contained Fires and Lessers and normals. 4 of 7 had kinks. She produced 8 eggs last year and all babies were flawless from the same Fire sire.

Second clutch was a virgin normal female to Enchi and Lesser males. Wound up with Enchis and Lessers and normals with 3 of 5 having kinks.

My third clutch is currently hatching, a Bumblebee to Pastel breeding. It looks like one Killerbee, two Super Pastels a Pastel and a normal. So far only the Pastel and a Super have come out but both have kinks. If I had any hair I'd be pulling it out.

I'm completely stumped as to what is going on. My Helix thermostat is set to 89 degrees, an additional thermometer sits on the incubator shelves to verify temps and I even put a third thermometer in with one of the egg boxes to triple check. All temps appear to be good. I'm really doing nothing differently then I've done in previous years. Same incubator and a lot of the same snakes last year produced flawless babies all year (with one exception). Eggs are on straight vermiculite and I open boxes to air eggs out about once a week. I air out eggs daily in the week leading up to hatch time.

Any help would be great as my season is falling apart with each emerging kinked baby.
-----
www.dbherp.com

[ Hide Replies ]

• My kinking problem (looking for input) - dbherp, Mon Aug 18 18:05:45 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for input) - Cahrens, Mon Aug 18 19:58:54 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for input) - dbherp, Mon Aug 18 21:05:11 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for inpu - ErikM, Mon Aug 18 21:16:01 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for inpu - kinderman, Mon Aug 18 23:33:15 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for inpu - dbherp, Tue Aug 19 10:19:53 2008
• my thought - Quality_Snakes, Tue Aug 19 05:07:32 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for input) - emberball, Tue Aug 19 17:23:46 2008
• RE: My kinking problem (looking for inpu - Paul Hollander, Tue Aug 19 17:53:38 2008