Reptile & Amphibian Forums

All 10 of these alterna eggs went to term and the first one popped yesterday afternoon. I cut 5 of them and left the other five to cut there way out themselves..

This morning none of the other five eggs had popped so i cut them and found them all fully formed but dead in the egg..

So unfortunatly i have learned this lesson the hard way... But you can be sure that from now on i will cut all of my eggs as soon as the first one pops..

I've been successful with never having to cut, and it IS hard to resist the temptation. Might it have been other factors involved ? I'd be interested in hearing from those with more experience...
Congrats on the new additions !

When I see the first one pip I usually give the others half a day or so to pip. If they haven't I slit the eggs. It seems like when they are ready to come out they only have a certain amount of time to do so or else they basically suffocate. Did all your dead babies have an egg tooth? I've had some die in the egg and when I looked closely the egg tooth was not there or not formed to a sharp enough point.
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Steve W.

Hey Mike,
I think thats happened at least once to everyone who has
ever bred graybands. Too bad for any babies to die but those of yours are especially nice. I can't speak for everyone but I think that most of the experienced breeders cut their eggs within 6-10 hours after the first one pips. Still that wont save them all. I've had a couple of instances where the snake had its head out of the egg, drew back in and for whatever reason died.
Very demoralizing when that happens. "Failure to thrive" syndrome is what some people call it. I think of it more as downright bad luck or Murphy's law. Whichever, it still sucks. I feel your pain, man. Best of luck with the survivors!
BA

Good info provided here guys. Appreciate it.

LG

You may be right, Steve, suffocation.
I had the same happen repeatedly (3 years) with annulata.
20 to 40 % - full term - dead
I increased the size of the "breathing holes" in the incubating container using a 1/8 inch drill bit with all other variables remaining the same, and then had 100% hatch.
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Regards, Bill McGighan

Bill, my incubator is nothing more than a large Rubbermaid that contains all of the small Tupperware's containing the eggs. Both the Rubbermaid and Tupperware's have air holes. I keep a tiny bit of water on the bottom of the Rubbermaid for humidity and there is a computer fan mounted on the lid to keep the air circulating. The temps stay between 76-80 and the humidity between 44% - 49%. Seems to work better than anything else i've tried.
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Steve W.

Interesting, Steve,
I have an almost identical setup with a higher humidity (around 80%) and I don't bury the eggs at all. I just let them sit on top of the bedding.
Now no full term deaths; eggs are rats and some kings from east and west, north and south.
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Regards, Bill McGighan

Bill, I also don't bury the eggs but I sit them in what you could describe as a crater. I think the fan is key in helping things to not get stale in the enclosure. I notice that eggs don't fungus up as easily.
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Steve W.

Good idea Bill. Another thing I did was switch from vermiculite to perlite [a Dave Doherty suggestion]. The reasoning according to Dave was more air circulation under the eggs with the coarser perlite. The vermiculite is denser and may not allow for enough oxygen to the eggs, especially towards the end of incubation.
Not a proven fact, but my hatch rate went up 20-25% with perlite.
Good luck to everyone breeding alternas this year! Its almost as much fun as catching them. [something I havn't been able to do for what seems like a hundred years now]!
BA

A lot of breeders, myself included, have been faced with this for many years. I had horrible numbers of babies going full term and then die before they pip. I was speaking to a close friend of mine who is a veterianarian and he told me it may be a problem with calcium deficiencies in the female producing the eggs. I supplemented my females and did have much better results with hardly any babies going full term, then dying in the shell. I reported this in a couple of the trade magazines. Many people supplemented there animals with calcium and had problems with their adults. These problems included enlarged hearts. That kind of made me reduce supplementation. I again started having full term babies die in the shell....

Personally, I do not know if perlite will help. That is something I also tried with poor results in the early 1990's. Another friend of mine told me this summer that when he was working at a zoo in Texas, they had similar problems. He felt placing a damp paper towel over the eggs one week prior to hatching would soften the egg shells allowing the baby snakes to have better success pipping. I am trying this strategy this year.....I should point out, alterna are the only snakes I have these problems with for the most part. I have success hatching out pyromelana, hognose snakes, California kingsnakes, Mexican Milksnakes, corn snakes, and on and on....anyway, placing a damp paper towel on the top of the eggs one week prior to hatching seems like it would be an easy fix. What are everyone else's thoughts! Thanks......

Thanks for the input.. Funny thing is i had 3 clutches of alterna eggs all in one rubbermaid container in my incubator... The first clutch hatched out fine. Only one hatchling has a very slight kink at the very end of his tail..

But this clutch of eggs felt very thick.. harder to the touch than my other eggs.. all nice & white and really big!.. but all hard

i have another clutch of alterna eggs due to hatch out in a few weeks.. i am going to try your tip and cover the eggs with a wet paper towel a week before..

I have had hatchlings die in the egg several times in the past.. but, never 5 out of 10 eggs.. And, I really hate losing alterna!!

~ Mike Russo

I had these two clutches in 2004, they were within weeks of each other, in the same room, both sets of parents were fed the same diet, only a dust of rep cal occasionally, kept in the same type of enclosure same temperatures through hibernation and everything. one clutch was 100% healty, one completely dead. no inbreeding, all of the adults are from very different origins. the black head pair produced dead in the egg in 2003 as well, because of this I cut open a couple eggs after 60 days but two tiny babies eventually came out, these five were not cut open in time. both incubated in pearlite, and I tryed to keep even amounts of moisture in both. it's a shame to see this kind of thing, and there seems to be little that can be done to avoid this condition untill it is understood better.

Great topic Mike,
Your picture brings up another question I'd like to ask to all to respond, and this probably needs to be qualified with the hatching medium entered as well.
Nothing succeeds like success, and you can see many good folks here have different recipes for their own.

How deep do you bury the eggs and in what media?

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Regards, Bill McGighan