Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my amel corn *slithers* shed today...it was 36 inches long shes becoming a biiig girl..i was wondering why there was blood though? ive seen some brown on other snakes shed at the kink but never blood....is this bad? another question what size and weight does a corn need to be to breed? and age? im not sure how old she is...shes longer then 36 inches too cuz her shed was all wrinkled and stuff so it was hard to measure...im hoping i can breed her this year..i wont powerfeed to do so though as i would rather wait the extra year or so and have a better clutch and healthier snake...anyway any replies are appreciated thanks
Chucky...
P.S. my other corn ..cornfed pic below is now like 27 inches long and eating 2 just turned fuzzys a week and still being hungry...and she learned to constrict as i fed her live for a bit on pinkys...then frozen thawed because she ate them alive and i didnt want her to get hurt, even tho they dont have claws...so later i tried a pinky/fuzzy live and she constricted and ever since she has become a ruthless killer

If you mean 2 small spots of blood at the vent on the shed skin, this is fairly normal, though I don't know what causes it.

The generally accepted size to breed is at least 300 grams and over 3 feet long. (Side note, shed skins streatch a lot, and are usually quite a few inches longer than the actual snake, so you can't use shed skins to measure your snake.) However, I've talked to a few local breeders and they think that this 300 gram/3 foot rule is a bunch of crap. However, both of these local breeders also said that older females will usually lay larger clutches than younger ones.

As long as the female has good weight (isn't visibly skinny), and is strong and healthy, she should be able to breed at a smaller size. I didn't breed one of my snakes because she was only 260 grams and 31 inches, but yet she decided that she was going to ovulate anyway, so I could have mated her and got fertile eggs, but I'll just have to wait until next year to get babies from her.

I also have another female (I just bought her this spring as a proven breeder) who just gave me 13 fertile eggs. If I hadn't know that she was proven I probably wouldn't have bred her as she was only 200 grams when I got her. She was also only slightly over 300 grams before she laid her eggs this past week and is now back down to about 210 grams. She is a very healthy snake that had no problems laying her eggs, even with me pestering her every other day.

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alstiver@hotmail.com

1.0 2001 Coral snow cornsnake
0.1 2002 Pastel Ghost poss Het Amelanistic cornsnake
1.1 2002 Bloodred cornsnakes
0.1 1998 Het Hypo, Het Caramel cornsnake
1.0 2000 Hypo Het Caramel cornsnake
0.0.13 2004 Eggs (potentially normals, hypos, caramels, and ambers)

I have never personally bred any snake but have recently read a few books about breeding snakes. I have also talked to a few guys I know that breed kings and from BOTH accounts you CAN breed smaller females but the three breeders told me that you can 'promote the snake to grow' by feeding it much more to get the snake into breeding size by the time it's a year old. They also said there is a few catch backs with that though because they will generally lay smaller clutches AND smaller eggs.

The book said usually the female should be about three years old before breeding starts.It also mentioned the fast growing of snakes and said while it's possible it doesn't recommend it. It also mentioned size and weight so the snake itself stays healthy and the clutch of eggs are larger. I don't know how true this is as I have said I never bred any snakes...but I am planning to wait TWO more years to breed my king since I care about my snakes health and have never bred snakes before.