The Ugly........
I would like to report my breeding successes and failures with Lampropeltis alterna for the past year……
I don’t know what it is about Gray-banded Kingsnakes, but over the past thirty years, I have experienced tons of infertile eggs, eggs going full term and then babies dying full term in the shell, and horribly kinked babies hatching. The worst – having perfect full term babies die in the shell AND in the same clutch, having the horribly kinked babies hatch and emerge from the shell (that’s happened on several occasions as well).
A number of years ago, I started using a RepCal® and or Minerall® product in an effort to increase my egg hatch…. This was in part, due to a conversation with Dale DeNardo who told me kinked baby snakes often indicates a calcium deficiency…Dale is a Veterinarian who has done a lot of work with reptiles. I started using a calcium product that fall and the following spring and my productivity increased remarkably….What I did not take note of was the presence or absence of Vitamin D-3 in the product I was using….
To help diminish the number of babies dying full-term in the shell, Norm Nunley suggested I try placing a damp paper towel on top of the eggs one to two weeks before they were due to hatch. The idea was that the paper towel would “soften” the egg shell so that the neonate could easily cut through the shell and exit the egg. This strategy helped our hatch rate and has been implemented by us with all clutches of Gray-banded Kingsnake eggs.
Fast forward a few years….to this forum….where I posted an inquiry regarding the use of lizards for increasing L. alterna egg fertility and hatch rates. That started a great discussion. Joe Forks and Ron Tremper suggested that I try a liquid form of Vitamin D-3….one that was available in the states and in Europe….Both told me they had much better hatch rates after using this vitamin.
So, I started to put two drops monthly on the rump of feeder mice(one drop every other week) and offering it to my snakes. I did not want to use too much because Vitamin D-3 is fat-soluble and is stored in the fat bodies of snakes; excesses are harder to void than water-soluble vitamins such as Vitamin C. My egg production increased remarkably in 2007 BUT due to an incubator malfunction, all the eggs reached excessive temperatures and died.
2008 was a different story…
THE GOOD……
In total, seven females produced eggs that hatched. My colony has 15 females, but some I purposefully did not breed for several reasons (mainly not having a locality-matched male)….long story short, I bred 11 females total this year….
This Gray-banded Kingsnake was found in 2002 as a young adult. In the eight ensuing breeding seasons, not once did she produce an egg that hatched….this year six out of seven hatched:
Some of the more dramatic success stories: I had eggs produced from females captured as adults or young adults in 1992; 1993; and 1995….In fact, two of these three females have not produced clutches of eggs in six and eight years….
My 1992 female, also captured as an adult, had nine eggs – only four of these hatched. The other five eggs during various stages of development.
Another female was captured gravid in 1993. She produced several clutches of eggs in the 1990’s and stopped laying fertile eggs in 2000. She is an old animal, exhibiting the symptoms of old age (including cloudy eyes). She was given the Vitamin D-3 supplement for the past year. This year, she laid 8 eggs…all 8 eggs hatched.
The second female, captured as a young adult in 1995 consistently laid eggs until 2002. She was also provided with the supplement and this year produced seven eggs. Four of the eggs hatched into huge adults. The other three eggs proved to be infertile, BUT went full term without exhibiting any of symptoms of infertile eggs. That is, they looked like a normal fertile egg, but never hatched. When I candled the eggs at term, the eggs were void. Upon opening the egg, they were filled with cloudy fluid with absolutely no development having occurred.
This is the male bred to the above two females…he too was supplemented with Vitamin D-3 twice monthly:
My 1992 female, also captured as an adult, had nine eggs – only four of these hatched. The other five eggs during various stages of development.
More good – none of my hatchlings had trouble hatching…they all absorbed their umbilical cords. I had no animals dying full term in the shell….not one……
Most looked healthy and fat like these two:
One thing I look for is the number of slits a baby Gray-banded Kingsnake makes during hatching. I think it is a good indication to the healthiness of the baby if there are a lot of slits in an egg before emerging.
Here is an image of a clutch of eggs from a wild-caught snake:
Note the number of slits….none of these were made by me…all were made by the snake.
This year, most of my snake eggs hatched with a good number of slits like this:
I noted in years past that clutches that had snakes making only one slit usually had some snakes that did not emerge successfully from the shell….
THE BAD………
My two adult Christmas Mountain female L. alterna produced two what appeared to be fertile clutches. Unfortunately, only one hatched into a full term healthy baby. And that was out of six eggs total (three from each female). The encouraging news is that one female was very young and this was her first clutch; and the other female was much older (caught in 1999). In fact, the latter female has not produced any eggs (fertile or infertile) in five years.
I also did not produce fertile eggs in the following animals (all of which were provided with Vitamin D-3): Palma Draw; Lozier Canyon, Hueco Mountain, third Christmas Mountain, and captive-bred Langtry…..the Hueco Mountain breeding, or lack thereof, was particularly disheartening….I went all out on both adults….Vitamin D-3 plus several lizards (frozen then thawed) pre brumation and post brumation. The female indeed bred with the male several times (and the sperm was viable as per microscope check)….She developed three eggs, went through a pre-egg laying shed, and then reabsorbed the eggs….go figure.
THE UGLY……..
Although I did not have any Gray-banded Kingsnakes die full term in the shell and had all the babies that hatched absorb their umbilical cords 100%, I still managed to produce three animals from two clutches that looked like this:
Despite being kinked, the animals were very strong and absorbed in most of their yolk sacs….
That’s correct – severely kinked. In discussions with many, the standard answer of too high an incubation temperature surfaced on several occasions. I incubated my eggs at 82 °F this year….only three out of about 40 exhibited this severe kinking. I hatched out numerous other baby snakes this year, none of which had even slight kinking. I still maintain that the females producing these clutches did not have proper nutrition, for example calcium. I am providing both animals with calcium to attempt to ameliorate this problem next year.
Well, there you have it: the good, the bad, and the ugly of my L. alterna production for the year! Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I realize that this information is anecdotal at best, but I am hopeful we get some good discussion going. Again, I would like to thank Dale DeNardo, Norm Nunley, Joe Forks, and Ron Tremper for very kindly sharing their ideas with me. I have no doubt that their suggestions have helped me a lot….
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G. Merker
