Reptile & Amphibian Forums

OK. This one is the most freakish egg-laying episode I've encountered personally.

My double het for hybino female was really swollen with eggs and she finally started laying on Saturday, July 7. Six monstrous eggs were laid (pictured below). Thes are the biggest eggs I've ever seen from a honduran and the female isn't my biggest. This was her first year breeding and she's only about 750 grams. So she laid six eggs but I could see she still had one large lump about three inches above the vent. I did a little manual manipulation for no more than 10 seconds but decided the best course of action was to just leave her be. Well, I peeked in on her this morning (July 9) and could see the egg had moved all the way down to her vent and she was working on getting it out. Great, I thought. A couple hours I looked back in and saw what I thought was the lower third of an egg protruding from her. Only proble was the end it was protruding from was her mouth! It was another huge egg that I'm surprised she was even able to get down, but she did. I know some snakes eat their eggs, particularily if they are infertile eggs but this is my first experience with this behaviour from a Honduran milk. From what I could see, the egg looked fertile.

My theory is she was so exhausted from pushing out those big eggs she desparately needed some food and the last egg served that purpose.

Pictured below are the female in pre-egg-lay shed and the monster eggs - that's a quarter in the pic for a size reference. She was bred to my tangerine albino male (who is huge in his own right) so these should be some giant babies.

Rob Haneisen

Congatulations ang "good luck" for breeding them.
This year i have a clutch with giant hondurenis eggs, too. The female is Tangerine, the male Tangerine pos. het. Vanishing. She layed 5 giant eggs. In the back you can see normal sizeed alterna eggs.

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Greetings Malte

www.lampropelten.net (german site)

Ande here is the last egg together with 5 eggs from my Chihuaha-Kingsnake

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Greetings Malte

www.lampropelten.net (german site)

Did you manage to take a picture of her eating the last egg? I've never heard of hondurans feeding on eggs...that would have been a sight for sore eyes. Hope you had captured it on camera.

Good luck with those 6 eggs.

Ray

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RAY - "Laziness is nothing more than a habit of resting before getting tired!"

Ray:

Sorry, no pics. The battery for my digital was dead and to be honest I didn't want to disturb her because I was seriously worried she was going to get stuck eating the darn thing.

Later that night I offered her a small FT mouse and she ate that too!

Rob

That is crazy. I have never had a honduran eat an egg, but last year I was out of town when one of my sinaloans laid (I missed it by two days maybe) and when I got back she was very swollen still, but in the wrong end! She had eaten all but 1 egg

Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

Vinny:

Bummer she ate all but one in that clutch.

Rob

Man...sorry to hear that.

What's really weird for me is I had a vivid dream last night that my Honduran ate two of her eggs and then laid 8 more...

Normally I have good snake dreams, but this was more like a nightmare.

Very strange coincidence.

Rob, will you be at Daytona this year?

-RG

RG:

No Daytona for me. It's a long trip from Massachusetts. Besides, my snakes are always a little on the late side. Right now I'm hoping to just have a decent amount of Hondurans for the All New England Show in Manchester NH on Oct. 6. My black milks are just now in their pre-egg lay sheds. I've got seven clutches of Hondo eggs in the incubator and three more Hondo clutches coming plus the two black milks. One Hondo had her pre-egg lay shed tonight. One more is in the egg box and will likely lay in the next day or so and one other Hondo is probably a day or two from going into her pre-egg lay shed (she refused food last night). Yesterday was the first time I put my first Honduran to lay this season (on June 7) in with a male for her second clutch breedings. You can see why I'm jealous of those of you already hatching out babies.

I've been to Daytona before as a patron and even went to the big show when it was in Orlando. It's an awesome time and I envy everyone who can go. But it's a long trip and it's right at one of the busiest times of the year for me as far as snakes starting to hatch.
Rob

I've got a picture of one of my hondurensis females eating one egg from her clutch, it's not a good picture but I will post it when I'm back from work so you will see it tomorrow.
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Greetings Malte

www.lampropelten.net (german site)

I had a Cal King that became egg bound. It took a bit of time but I was able to manually push the egg out the shoot. For what ever reason I put the egg in the box with the snake to answer the phone. I came back an hour later to put the snake back in her cage. I picked her up and saw a lump in her. I said what the F###.......I did not have much fun pushing out that one egg and was sure there was only one. Thats when I looked down and found the egg missing from the box.I guess the snake was hungry. From reading the other posts it looks like if a snake gets the opportunity they will munch on there own eggs.........or maybe the snake was concerned about the gnats the egge would attract...ha ha

Scott Sweeney
Sweeney's Serpents

Hey Rob, I was just wondering if that female het from me laid a good clutch and if so how many. Randy W.

Ughh!

She laid 11 eggs and all but two were bad. I candled the two eggs and they have good veins developing. I'm going to try giving her clacium and vitamin supplements and put her in with a different male. The male who bred with her did fine with an unrelated snake (12 out of 12 eggs were fertile).

Rob