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Yet again, all my hatchlings turned out males. Next year I want to produce many more hatchlings and will be paying more attention to controlling temps. What temperatures tend to favor the development of females?

With some other herps, temperature is a controlling factor on gender. Probably makes the top eggs in a clutch one gender, the bottom ones the other gender, and produces a bit of a nice ratio. However with snakes, or at least with most colubrids (can't speak for all snake species and SURE don't know everything), the only one in charge of gender is Murphy. I think I read somewhere Murphy's Law's of snake keeping & breeding. Can't remember right off the top most of them, but some of them

* The prettiest snake in a clutch will always be a non-feeder
* When you want males, you get females, and when you want females you get all males.
* The most unusual snakes are the least inclined to breed.

etc. etc.

I had two clutches of baby snakes hatch this year, not corns just kings. Here are the stats for the two clutches:

Cal king: 8 eggs laid, 8 eggs hatched, ALL were male, and the prettiest one died.

Blotched King: 8 viable eggs & 1 slug laid, 8 hatched, 2 males, 6 females, and the prettiest one died.

Murphy has no control over the statistical distribution of things. I'm sure there is a set percentage of male and female eggs laid that the species is inclined to produce. AND if you were to look at 10,000 eggs you would find that the percentage is dead on. But Murphy always makes sure that YOU see the raw end of those statistics. Statistics are evil, run by Murphy. I should know! I have a degree in statistics.

>>Yet again, all my hatchlings turned out males. Next year I want to produce many more hatchlings and will be paying more attention to controlling temps. What temperatures tend to favor the development of females?
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~Sasheena