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This litter was produced two days ago. It's the first time that I actually witnessed one of my snakes giving birth. The parents are siblings that I produced in 2007.




Here's mom eating a brown slug. I've never seen a brown slug before. Yum!

A couple of interesting preemies.


Unfortunatly this one was stillborn.


OK, someone is going to have to explain to me what is going with these? The pink one was also stillborn and it is seriously lacking in pigment.

The two preemies that survived.



A couple of pics with a normal sibling at two days old.


Dan
www.forestcityserpents.com

Those are pretty neat Dan!
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Aubrey Ross

©
www.SlipstreamSerpents.com

Damn you Rainbow Gods! It always has to be the cool one! Seriously though, I think the "pink" one passed before the pigment portion of development was complete!

You might be right, but it does have reduced black pigment like you see in hypos. These stillborns were 17g and 18g. I produced a live 10g baby two years ago that looked perfectly normal except for being a bit pale at birth.

Small ones of 17 and 18 grams that look pale just have been slow developing and have not absorbed enough of the yolk. A 10 gram one that is full term or close to it is probably a surviving twin.

Good point. I hadn't thought of the possibility of that 10g snake being a twin.

Yes, lots of the pigmentation of the skin occurs in the last week of developement. The pattern is on the snake many weeks earlier. Those two pale ones are several days behind the rest of the litter development wise. They will prolly eventually color up like the rest of the litter. They and a couple of those dead ones have some really nice pattern aberrancies.

Cool looking babies. It's too bad about those stillborns. I'm looking forward to seeing some pics post shed.

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Paul D

www.MoonlightBoas.com

Like Jeff said, the color will likely come in later as preemies are typically light in color. Were any of the full term babies showing pattern abnormalities?

Any way you slice it you have some keepers for sure!!!

And a repeat pairing is in your future!!!

With the low count of abys, this could be a recessive trait??
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Dave, there were 16 full term,normal looking babies in this litter. One of those was also stillborn.

It does seem odd that there would be four aberrant looking preemies in one litter if there wasn't some kind of recessive gene involved. Hopefully I'll find out next year.

I know there is a good chance that these preemies will develope color, but if they don't, maybe dad had something to do with it. He is the one that changed color practically over night. He will also be paired with a sister that went through the same color change several months ago. It took her a couple weeks to fully change.

Dave could be right. This could be the result of a simple recessive genetic mutation. Also consider the possibility that this is related to a gestational anomaly. High percentage of different patterns among the premie ones makes me wonder about this. Possibly mom spent lots of time with part of her body and part of the litter warmer than the rest. Another possibility is that part of the litter was fertilized several days after the rest of them by old decrepit sperm cells. Just making some guesses on possible causation.

Actually I had already thought about that. Are they aberrant because they are premature or are they premature because they carry a mutant gene? All I can do is pair these two up again next year and see what comes of it.

I think I can rule out part of the litter being kept warmer than the rest because the preemies were scattered throughout the litter.

Old decrepit sperm? If this is the result maybe someone will find a way to bottle the stuff.LOL

Dan

Congratulations on the nice litter, thanks for sharing!

Ed

Thanks Cliff.

Final count was 17 live, 16 normal including one full term stillborn, plus 4 aberrant preemies including two that were stillborn and three slugs. She ate two of the slugs. I think Dave has posted at least one pic of one of his snakes eating a slug.

I had a litter of 23, probably a week earlier while I was out of town. There were no still born and no slugs when I found them. I'm expecting three more litters.

Has anyone ever seen a brown slug before? That's the only one I've ever seen.

Dan

Brown slug could possibly be a slug retained from prior year. I have only seen a few of them. Compared to the yellow slugs they have been nasty looking.