Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This really belongs on the BP forum I suppose, but I don't go there, and prefer the discussions here, lol.

Had a Ball Python drop 8 eggs the other day. She coiled perfectly around 7, leaving one out. The egg looked perfectly fine. My wife was helping me and I mentioned that the egg left out was probably no good, Even though it looked just fine. We candled them, they all candled fine. The outed egg, wasn't as veiny as the others, but it wasn't the yellowy, dud egg color either. Had I not seen it left out, I would've considered it fine.

Fast Forward, 3 days, 7 perfect eggs, one egg going downhill rapidly, and not going to make it. One guess which one. It's amazing how these animals know these things. It really did look like it had no issues, even when candling. The dam knew better.
www.serpenteer.com

That is very interesting.

Back in the mid 90s I had a California King lay a clutch of eggs while I was at the store down the street....When I came back home she was in the process of swallowing the last one.....I thought to myself that they were all duds...I could feel 4 in her stomach. I never paired her back up with a male that year......
Later that summer she laid 9 perfect eggs and they all hatched....
I thought to myself that she knew she needed nourishment and was willing to sacrifice her first clutch to feed her second one.....
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Those are both pretty neat stories!

I also have a similar story...

When my s.o. and I were out of town, one of his Cornsnakes laid a clutch of eggs. When we got back, it was obvious that they were laid a few days prior. He wasn't expecting her to lay so soon, so there wasn't a lay box. They were just laid on the aspen.

The really neat thing was that she wrapped herself around almost all of the eggs that she laid, and saved them! The ones she didn't manage to coil around were very dried out and were gone. Nearly every egg she wrapped around hatched!

I think snakes are smarter than we give them credit for sometimes.
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Aubrey Ross

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