Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Breeders, I have a question in reference to healthy hatch rates. Have you noticed higher success rates in eggs when your female produces fewer, larger eggs? Or do you have better success when the lays 14 little ones?

Just curious to get some opinions.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

I haven't seen much of a difference in small vs large clutches.
But Sse if you can figure why some can't slit the egg and die is that due to feeding mice?

I am sure everybody wants to see a deflated alterna passed out next to a bunch of eggs.
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Herp Conservation Unlimited

If people really learn from their mistakes, I should be like the smartest guy in the world

Steve,
I would say average or "normal size" eggs & larger eggs I personally prefer, as smaller than normal eggs usually mean smaller than average neonates. Then as we all know, smaller alterna hatchlings = the need for even smaller pinks/lizards = a pain, right? Whether a snake lays 3 eggs or 14, so long as they are normal or larger in size, thats what we should strive for IMHO. John F.

I compiled a relatively small data set that I analyzed to determine what had an effect on the success rate of hatching eggs. I found that clutch size did not significantly affect the hatch rate. I found out more that diet and supplementation of the gravid female had the biggest influence on the successful hatch rate.

Could be the limited size of the data set that gave me this results but the analysis of variance and the mathematics behind the analysis are sound and correct. Maybe if there were some large data sets on grey bands... Who knows what we can find out.