Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Lance and I got our first clutch of Alterna eggs this year. North Sanderson, way north. Anyway we started with 9 eggs. 1 obvious slug. 8 is great, but then another went bad. 7 is a small slice of heaven but alas, it also went south. 6 is bliss but then something went amiss...

The first Alterna egg pipped last night and the head stayed out of the egg for over 14 hours. I had my wife check on it today and when she opened the small rubbermaid bin it went back into the egg. Now I when I get home the snake will not move at all...
So, it looks like the first one is no more... Maybe the little snake was never meant to be but I was so excited to experience the first Hatchling Alterna...

Best Wishes,

Steven

Steven....I feel your pain! I have been breeding alterna for the past 26 years...I have tried to increase my egg hatch success with limited success....I have caught four gravid females....all have had very high hatch rates for fertile eggs (I still am waiting on a clutch of eggs from a gravid female caught this year)... I know there is a lot of information we need to acquire regarding the reproduction biology of these snakes. I am pretty sure it has something to do with Vitamin D3...I plan on increasing the Vitamin D3 (a suggestion from Ron Tremper and Joe Forks)...and will hopefully get a better hatch rate next year. I can tell you that I had increased the Vitamin D3 last summer via some liquid Vitamin D3 and was very encouraged by the increase of fertile appearing eggs this spring. Unfortunately, my incubator malfunctioned and cooked all my eggs so no definitive answer could be made for this season...I will continue to use the D3 and try again next year (I did purchase a new incubator)....anyway, I hope others will post here....I know a lot of people have great success for a few years, but after about 5-8 years, this success seems to drop off......anyway, just wanted you to know you are not alone....gmerker

You are 100% NOT alone!! Last year was a very bad year for me.. I lost several alterna fully formed, but dead in their eggs..

This year i supplemented with vitamin D3 with every other meal from post hiberhation through egg deposition.. Although, I tried D3 supplimentation years ago, and did not really see a big difference in egg quality or hatch rate??

Also,.. with advice that gmerker offered last year.. One week before my eggs are due to hatch i have been laying a damp paper towel over them and i have increased air flow to the eggs during that last week as well..

I am still waiting on 5 alterna clutches to hatch out, but so far i am having a much better year with my alterna..

~ Mike Russo

So far this season I have had 17 of 17 hatch with out a problem, I still have 16 more to go, and they all look great. My secret? I did what was suggested here on the board a few months back. I feed diurnal lizards the 3 meals before and after brumation.
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South Texas Herps

Are your adults low generation locality animals or are they multi-generation generic? Just a theory but I think it's possible the multi-generation generics could be less sensitive and more geared towards a rodent diet. Then again you said you used lizards but I am still curious as to what your adults were.

To feed your alterna lizards and then switch back to mice again... I would just supplement with D3 and maybe some natural sun light.

Congrats on the good hatch rate. I have 4 pipping out of the eggs now. Only 1 more left. Hey, 5 alterna better than none.

Steven

I fed a couple pairs of my adults 1 lizard each during breeding season. It did not make any difference with fertility, in fact those pairs performed very poorly. I still think 3-4 lizards each could have made a difference but I am going to try D3 supplementation before I go that route. I will say that I had no problem whatsoever getting them back onto mice. That's probably because they were captive born adults that were already well established mouse feeders. I don't know how hard it would be with wild caughts or picky feeders.

OK,

My generic alterna phase had no problems going to or from lizards, she also double clutched, 1st clutch had 15 good eggs, second is incubating with 9 good eggs.

My WC 277 (Carruthers Creek area) started on mice with out a problem and went to and from lizards with out any problems either, she just failed to ovulate (she was 38" when I caught her last season)

My WC Juno rd (S-curves) was small to breed, but I went ahead and brumated her because I figured she would be expecting it, she origionally had no problems eating mice, however, she never would eat a lizard. If I can find a local male for her, she should throw some screamers next season.

My 03 F2 Lajitas female also had no problems going from mice to lizards and back. She laid 2 good eggs, that were freakin huge. One was 2.75". She is a smaller female and retained one egg, that I had to drain through the side wall. She is doing fine now. I could also use a local male for her.

I have another generic 04 female (277XLangtry, im told) that had no problems swithing from lizards to mice and vise versa. She laid 7 good eggs.

I also feed lizards to my greeri and thayeri female, both switched to lizards and back to mice with out any problems, but neither one of them laid a good clutch. I think my problem was brumatino temp. I brumated at 65 degrees, that was the coldest I could get it in South Texas. The alterna did fine at 65 but I think the mexicana could have done well if brumated cooler.

All the lizards were FT Texas Spiney lizards that I had bought from commercial collecter here in Kingsville. The large spineys I would cut down the middle of it to split it and give it to two females. I also cut the legs off and feed them to the slightly smaller females.
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South Texas Herps

That's good info, thanks.

Steven,

They can hold their breath for a long time and I've seen babies duck back in the egg and breath from an air pocket. Give it a couple days before you go in after it.

I have some 277 snakes hatching right now. It's been five days since they started hatching and the last one isn't out of the egg yet. Some stayed in the egg with their head out for three days.

There were 10 eggs laid with two obvious slugs. One out of the eight didn't survive because it's egg was fused directly under another egg. When it tried to slit the egg, it couldn't break through both eggs. I think it drowned.

Tom Anderson