Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After 9 weeks of waiting I had 1 baby hatch out of 2 clutches of eggs. "Sunday" is doing good (1st baby ever born on 1st day of the week..Sunday) . The other eggs I was hoping would hatch started to look bad so cut them open. One egg had a baby just starting. It was probably the size of a piece of speghetti. The other 2 had full term babies but their heads looks really big an their snout small. Does anyone know what would cause that? Could it be the parents or just one of those things that happen with snake babies? All the babies looked like the mama. 1 even had a really cool zig-zag pattern. Being an animal lover I buried the little things vs. tossing them in the trash. Also since the father is a ghost does that make Sunday het for ghost? Mama is normal colors with zig-zag pattering. Well, just wanted to write where other snake lovers understand. Thanks for reading.

Oh I'm so sorry for your loss. Very happy little Sunday made it though. Yes, Sunday will be het for Ghost. I don't know what caused the other babies not to make it. I'm glad you have your one special baby though.

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Slytherin Serpents

Have you been hugged by your snake today?

Ball Pythons
1.1 Normals het Caramel (Edward & Bella)
0.1 Normal 66% ph Caramel (Rosalie)
0.1 Caramel (Bellatrix)
1.0 Hypo (Nick)
1.0 Honey Bee (Aragog)
0.1 Hypo Pastel (Nagini)
0.1 Spider 66% ph Hypo(Nymphadora)
1.1 Mojaves (Lucius & Renesme)
0.1 Pastel Lesser (Narcissa)
0.1 Pinstripe (Arwen)
1.0 Pewter (Salazar)
0.1 Bumble Bee (Alice)
0.1 Lemonblast (Luna)
0.1 Blond Pastel (Katie)
1.0 Bell Pastel (Jasper)
0.1 African Dinker (Esme)
0.1 Normal (Madame Olympe Maxime)
0.3 Normal Babies 66% ph Caramel (Edward x Bella)
2.1 Pastel "Dinker" Babies (Jasper x Esme)

Corns
1.1 Normals het Amel, Anery, Charcoal, Diffused, Hypo (Romeo & Juliet)
1.0 Blizzard het Diffused (Tumnus)
0.1 Anery Lavender het Amel (Lucy)
0.1 Plasma (Victoria)
0.1 Opal (Jewel)
0.0.22 Babies (Romeo x Juliet)
0.0.18 Babies (Tumnus x Lucy)

Hogs
1.0 Albino Western (Hogwarts)
0.1 het Albino Western (Hufflepuff)
0.1 Tri Color (Molly)

No way of really knowing for sure without knowing all the ins and outs of how you were incubating. My first two guesses would be either retained sperm (can't remember if you said the female was a virgin or not. My other guess would be humidity.

Retained sperm is not that common but when it does happens and it almost always ends up with small clutches with lots of fertility issues, small eggs and usually LOTS of deformaties in the babies that manage to make it to hatching. If she was not a virgin and she only laid 3 eggs, I would bet this is the problem.

Too much humidity will cause issues with babies being born with deformities also.

Good luck next year

dc

>>No way of really knowing for sure without knowing all the ins and outs of how you were incubating. My first two guesses would be either retained sperm (can't remember if you said the female was a virgin or not. My other guess would be humidity.
>>
>>Retained sperm is not that common but when it does happens and it almost always ends up with small clutches with lots of fertility issues, small eggs and usually LOTS of deformaties in the babies that manage to make it to hatching. If she was not a virgin and she only laid 3 eggs, I would bet this is the problem.
>>
>>Too much humidity will cause issues with babies being born with deformities also.
>>
>>Good luck next year
>>
>>dc

That was what I was thinking...Too much humidity/moisture. I think that the if you have too much moisture the eggs absorb so much water that it restricts the growth of the babies. This is just speculation but since I've been incubating as dry as I can possibly go, I haven't seen this problem. It works for me...over the last three seasons average 95% hatch rate.
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Corn snakes and rat snakes...No one can have just one.
"Resistance is futile"
Jimmy Johnson
(Draybar)
Draybars Snakes

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I have only hatched one snake with that big head look. I know a few other breeders that have hatched one or two a year. If yours is the same then they appear like that dinosaur with the big head (Pachycephalosaurus). As wierd as it appears, they will survive and eat and act just like a snake should. I just can't stand to look at them, to weird for me.

dc

Yes!...that is what they looked like.

Back in April / May I put her with a male to see what would happen. She layed a clutch of 15.Put them in a container of perlite. None of them hatched an had bugs. Then 8 weeks later she laid a 2nd clutch of 15. I put them eggs in a container of spagmum moss. I incubated them in one of those little styrofoam coolers you can buy at a grocery store (limited funds to buy a real incubator). Had the cooler setting on a human heating pad. Temp stayed in the 82-85 range. Had a container of water on the bottom an the cooler with the eggs setting on that. According to the humidiy gauge I had in there it was mostly in the 70-80% range.

I am delited that one baby hatched out of all the eggs she laid. Some of the eggs were no good to start with. Some were nice a white but turned bad. My surviving baby, Sunday, is a week old now!

So many things can effect the babies it's hard to know what happened. The deformed heads could have disabeled the egg tooth somehow also. But would you have wanted dinasour headed babies? I don't use any incubator at all. I use vermiculite (Perlite is good), and moisten it. I put it and the eggs on top in a plastic shoe box and place them in a room with no air conditioning. I also have gone to a less humid mixture with my eggs. Oh do you know if the eggs got moved at all? I had a clutch of Everglades rats get bumped and I forgot to mark the top of the eggs and half died in the eggs. I'm pretty sure it was cause the eggs got turned slightly, and they were not in the right position to cut out.
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King Snakes! Who can make a better mouse trap?
J Sierra

It sounds like it may have been too high a temp and humidity from your reply post. The only time I had funky headed babies were when I got a bit paranoid with a clutch of greybanded king eggs and misted the vermiculite around the eggs pretty heavy a week or so before they were due to hatch. It may have something to do with too much moisture being absorbed by the embryos or something. The babies had google eyes, shortened and deformed jaws, etc. Very odd. Also, many folks complained about fertility problems, eggs going bad, etc. this past season. Not sure, but the colder than normal winter here in Louisiana and our jump pretty much straight into summer may have contributed to this.