Bill, that's a great theory. I've worked on this problem before myself, only with Chinese red-headed ratsnakes and Chinese stripe-tailed ratsnakes. It seems they lay eggs with tough eggshells and the babies have a hard time breaking through. I used to open the eggs as soon as I saw the first pip. I also had a theory, that in the wild eggs incubated at lower temps, so for a longer period of time, and the shells lost some rigidity with the longer inbubation. I failed to prove that conclusively as I had to part with the snakes after just a few breedings.

TC


>>Myself and a few other guys are trying a chick-only diet for our Gonyosoma and my Boiga collection. Both arguably feed more on an avian diet in the wild. Both experience high full-term mortality rates in eggs wherein fully formed embryos fail to exit the egg for some reason.
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>>In both species eggs from gravid wc imports do not manifest this problem. When acclimated and fed a primarily rodent diet the situation reoccurs.
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>>We are hypothesizing that rodents, with their higher bone density, result in a higher calcium intake for the females which may end up resulting in egg walls that are too thick for the babies to break through. Manual pipping is often necessary for the babies to successfully emerge.
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>>Purely an unscientific theory based upon a few guys "shooting the bull" so-to-speak. All my female Boiga and Gonyosoma are currently being fed a 90% chick/quail diet and I'm anxious to see if this has any beneficial effects on future clutch-success rates.
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>>Bill
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Conserving reptiles by helping to protect habitat...
www.ratsnakehaven.com
www.scenicsantaritas.org

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