Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Part 1)

Unfortunately, both neonates are grossly deformed. I cut open one egg this morning and after revealing the deformed baby I decided to cut open the next one...only to find it was deformed as well.

It all seems very obvious to me now, of course they were going to be deformed...

In my opinion, if you incubate your eggs (tightly control the temperature fluctuations) during their development, all healthy neonates "should" hatch within 3 days of each other, in most cases.

So, in the future...on the 4th day I will slit away. Hopefully to save an upside down snake like MGL previously stated...but also to relieve my mind.

Part 2)

I did not brumate the parents of this clutch...and it was the first clutch from both as well. I want to here from the experts on this subject...What are your opinions on the cause of deformities?

I used to think it was temperature dependent, but now I feel temperature effects mainly small spinal deformities or kinks in otherwise healthy neonates.

The deformities (shown below) are something much different than what I've seen in the past 10+ years of breeding kings and milks. It appears that the snakes are missing the lower half of their body. Also, considering 2 out of 3 eggs are deformed is alarming as well.

Are these deformities due to improper brumation of the parents (unhealthy egg and sperm)? Anyone else see this type of massive deformities?

Can the incubation substrate (vermiculite or peat moss) have a negative effect on the developing eggs?

Please let me know your thoughts?

-RG

Sorry if the picture is disturbing.

well i nmy limited experience i have run into a few deformities. mostly where the upper body fuses to the lower body and sometimes where pat of the body is missing. i dont believe their has been any real evidence to what causes such deformities but i have always chalked it up to something within are incubation methods.
in all honesty in nature the eggs are not subjected to perfect temps or prfect humidity but a range of all enviromental changes. we try to perfect the correct "formula" by giving what we think is the perfect setup i.e. humidy and temps as well as medium. but i believe that maybe the developing embyos need some fluctuations to develop correctly. obviously my belief is not entirely true do to the thousands of babies hatched each year but those few that dont may have needed some fluctuation to develop at a differant rate or certain aspect of development needed a different temp or humidity to develop correctly.
in nature nothing is perfect or steady it may take longer to hatch but babies may be bigger or maybe more ready to accept meals. when i have enough clutches i will start to try some of this but at this time i myself use the "formula".

also i dont believe that bumping eggs around or marking them has anything to do with hatching or not. i have had an entire incubator fall and flip the eggs upside down and ALL the eggs hatched, it flipped 1 month into incubation and they were flipped for almost 6 hours cuz my mother dumped them and put them back with out telling me. when i noticed something was up i decided to just leave them instead of trying to put them back to their origional position.
henry dean also did some experiments and came to the same conclusion as i.
adam jeffery

-----
hybrid breeders association
1.1 kenyan sand boas
1.1 mbk
1.1 butter corns
0.1 striped albino corn
0.1 childrens python
0.1 albino nelsons
0.1 milksnake phase
0.1 anery motley
0.1 bone white cross
0.1 albino banded cal king
0.1. normal corn het hypo,anery
1.0. snow corn het hypo,anery,amel
1.0. amel corn unknown hets(4ft 8inch long)
1.0 sinacorn
1.0 blizzard leo gecko
0.2 normal leo geckos
1.0 3 lined mud turtle