Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A thread below got me interested in this. What was your first experience with hatching reptile eggs? Here's mine.

In 1972 I was twelve and found a gravid female eastern king. I incubated her eggs in a gallon glass jar (holes poked in the lid) filled with half composted sawdust from a local mill that I kept under my bed. This was pre AC days so it got pretty hot up there but they all hatched and where perfect!

From there I was able to breed then, get eggs and hatch them, all in the early 70's isolated from anyone else who liked snakes. My big failure in vision was that anybody else might be interested. I was never able to get any babies started so all were released. My Mom had a big no rodent's in the house rule so I couldn't raise my own and I the number of snakes I could keep was limited to the number of mice I could trap around the barn.

PS The pic is not of the original easterns

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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emmerson

WWW.TDSNAKES.BLOGSPOT.COM

My first experince was alos in 1972. I had eggs from a pacific gopher snake i caught. I put the eggs in a clear plastic bag filled with air and moist paper towels (hey it was the only info we had back then). None of the eggs survived . But looking back now it could have been that the eggs were not fertilized.

Though i thought it was the paper towels i used. But really they should have worked. As a 13 year old I checked the eggs, temp and humidty sevral times a day. The eggs just slowly turned bad one by one.

My next experince was with sand and plastic bag again with pin holes. None of those hatched out either.
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www.Bluerosy.com

Thanks for sharing I wasn't even born until '74 & didn't hatch my first snakes until 2000. L.G.Getula are my favorite kings.

About 1973-74 my uncle gave me a clutch of eggs he had found. He gave them to me in a glass jar with the eggs in clay soil. They turned out to be black rats and hatched perfectly fine in my tree house. I'm sure the temps in the tree house were around 100 degrees many days.

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Randy Whittington

Tree house?

Man you spoiled kid. i never had a tree house. I grew up in the city. Always dreamed of living in a situation like yours.
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www.Bluerosy.com

It was a small one but I'm hear to tell you I had that thing packed with cridders every spring and summer. It was covered by shade much of the day but still got rather warm at times.
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Randy Whittington

In sixth grade, we moved from Germany to Ft Walton Beach Fl, and I had wanted a snake for a long time, but they were very expensive and hard to get over there. So for the years living in Germany I had to be satisfied with a Green Anole I got for 20 Marks and all the books I could get my hands on.

My Dad was a Combat weather guy in AF and worked with the Army Rangers a lot, so one day he took me out to the swamps where the Ranger camp was and introduced me to the Sgt in charge of the snakehouse they have out there, and he gave me a tour of the snakehouse. When I left he gave me my very first cornsnake. They told me to set it up with a cage that was 1/2 sand and 1/2 gravel and give it some branches and hiding places.

When I got home I set up the cage and put my new snake in there, I was so pumped! For the three years I had been living in Germany I had read and looked at every pic I could find of snakes. When I learned that we were moving to Florida, I was determined to find as many snakes as possible and I could not wait to get my very first cornsnake! Now that dream was a reality!

But when my older brother came home he looked at the snake and said, "I think that snake is pregnant",
and sure enought that night she started laying eggs around the cage. I had no idea what to do! So I called up Sgt Rankin, and he explained to put the eggs in moss and bring them to him and he would try to incubate them. BUT there was one major problem, one of the eggs had gotten stuck and my new snake did not look good. Once again I called up the Sgt, and he said I needed to get some vasoline and massage the egg that was stuck from the female.

Well, this is where my Mom comes in and she still tells this story to this day!
"MOM" I screamed, "My snake needs our help get the vasoline!"

Well to make a long story short, my mom helped deliver snake eggs, and she had never before touched a snake! That was just the beginging! (She now has stories of sleeping in college liveout with rattlesnakes in cages close to the bed!)

My cornsnake died, and the eggs did not hatch, but I got another snake from the Rangers, and that is how it all started. Well sorta, it really began much sooner at two feet tall and with worms in my pockets!
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"Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew!" Charlie Papazian

That's great! I would love to see more posts of how you guys [and girls] got started in the snake hobby. It used to give me a great feeling when in giving school lectures that I could get some youngster interested in keeping a snake.-----theOLDherper---'Pete'

Mine were Cal king eggs. The eggs had flattened out quite a bit, and I thought something was wrong. I carefully slit open one of the eggs thinking I would find just goop (I knew nothing about snake eggs at the time) , and to my surprise, there was the virtually fully formed snake.

I felt horrible. I used regular transparent tape to seal up the egg and figured it was a gonner, but I placed it back into the box anyway.

About a week later, all the eggs hatched, including the one I had slit! Colubrid eggs are tough alright.
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Mark

With my impatience I have slit many a king snake egg......When I figure out I slit them too early I usually use tissue to "patch" the slit up....the wet yolk and tissue make a nice bond to the egg....Plus it covered up my "mistakes".....LOL
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

When I was a kid there was a guy in my area that bought/sold/caught/exploited just about anything that he could make a $ on. I’d help out cleaning cages, feeding, etc. and I’d find eggs in the cages sometimes.
Ray would actually sell eggs through the mail or REA Express! We’d make up a “kit” and he’d send them off. I never knew anyone who bought any or if any actually made it but I can relate one or two of my tales here…
After finding a few clutches in a community walk in cage, I'd ask Ray if I could try and hatch a few (corns, rats, racers, mudsnakes,etc.)…easy enough. THAT got me hooked.
I “graduated” to more valuable ones like kings, and milks. One day we had a clutch of indigo eggs and I just had to try one..
Well as a testament to the hardiness of snake eggs, I held that lone egg in my palm the entire ride on my bike home. About 4-5 miles or so? It was placed on a bed of sphagnum peat and covered with moist newspaper. After the 2 months I was used to with the others, I figured I must’ve screwed up or otherwise killed it…but.. it still looked good, so I kept it out on the porch (had to be over 90F at times) and in another month and a half, I’d say about 90-100 days, the COOLEST SNAKE EVER popped his little red chin outta that egg! Talk about a happy camper…
:Mark

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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

That's awesome Mark!
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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emmerson

WWW.TDSNAKES.BLOGSPOT.COM

It's a shame that I can no longer breed those snakes here in FL.
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

I was one when all that happened.....LOL

But in 1992 or I found a clutch of eggs and didn't know what they were from.....I guessed Splendida or Emoryi.......I put them in my glove compartment and drove them home.......I read in a book how to incubate so I gathered my materials and did the following.....

I placed them in some potting soil, half buried and covered the container with the lid....I drilled two holes in the lid and placed the container on a cinder block in the aquarium.......Then I filled up the aquarium until the water touched the bottom of the egg container......I dropped in an aquarium heater and waited for over a month....One morning I checked them out and saw all 13 eggs with ratsnake heads poking out......I was hooked on breeding since then....Prior to that I only kept snakes.......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

It was geckos I can't remember anymore if it was my P. pictus or my leopards. I would have probably been 13?? I used to find eggs from both semi-regularly. I had both species set up in communal caging...the 3 leopards were in one of the old 2' visions...the 3 pictus were in a 20 long for a while...I wound up with more eventually and moved 'em up to a 40 breeder with plants and stuff.

I was a kid and didn't have a clue about incubation. Incubated in situ and it worked sometimes, sometimes didn't. I got a few leopards to hatch...a fair number of pictus. The pictus I just separated out till they were about 2/3 grown (not that long) and put them back in...hence the eventually larger tank, with a fair number of little geckos. Those were neat guys and I miss 'em.
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

The first eggs I hatched were turtle eggs. There was a retention pond behind the house I grew up in. I used to walk the banks almost daily. Occasionally I'd find a turtle nest, or I would find turtle eggs on the surface. I think the very first ones I hatched were stinkpot eggs, but they hatched within a couple days of being collected. I subsequently hatched some softshell eggs I dug up after catching the female in the act of laying.

my first was a gravid checkered garter that i caught around 10yrs.old,('77) WOW and i saw it give birth! WHOA...HOOKED!!!, joined s.tx.herp society got schooled by folks like joe lazlo, mike bishop who lived down the street from my grandma and would let me come and experience all his critters firsthand, both and all of my mentors ALWAYS freely gave honest advise and encouragement, 2 things that sadly lack in the hobby today. which has unfortunately turned into a big back stabbing under cutting selfish, shameless business imho.
but anyway...
my first successful raise/breed/egg/incubate were green anoles i had quite the colony these were followed by l.c.calligaster, l.g.splendida all on potting soil/sphagnum moss in gallon jars with great success.

,,,,,,,,,,,,thomas davis
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Morphs... just like baseball cards BUT ALIVE, how cool is that???

my website www.barmollysplace.com