Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here it is, a picture of my cal king's clutch.

It started with 12 eggs.... after a heat spike, two of the eggs died, and rotted. I removed them, leaving 9 decent looking eggs, and one really pathetic shrunken egg. One of the hatchlings was dead in the egg... full term but died just before the eggs started to pip. The shrunken egg actually had a baby snake in it, and it did hatch successfully. One of the eggs that I slit myself had a baby that was 1/3 the size of the others... it's little umbilical was tied around it's middle. I snipped it off, knowing it would NOT live if left like that, and probably wouldn't live if snipped. Well, I offered it a pinky head even before shedding and it downed it with incredible enthusiasm (took it an hour to down the pinky head). It's a teeny tiny little baby, barely 6 or 7 inches long.

A couple of the hatchlings left their yolk behind, and one had it's yolk spilling out as it crawled, but so far they all appear to be doing very well!
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~Sasheena

It's a collage and none of them have shed yet.

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~Sasheena

presentation.

Few clutches of CA king eggs are due to hatch here next week. Should be a pretty diverse grouping as well. My presentation though will not be nearly as nice.

Best regards, Rich Hebron

Thanks. I had a disastrous outcome from my cornsnake eggs.... 8 viable babies out of 35 eggs... and of those 2 are kinked/deformed heads. It was nice to have slightly better results from the kingsnake eggs, though I did start with 27 eggs, one whole clutch dying is a little different from hatching out deformed (in one case coinjoined twins) and kinked and pathetic baby corns.

I've been taking college courses, teaching summer school, and jumping through the hoops necessary to become a fully certified math teacher. Had to have the patience until summer school ended and I finished the last of three final exams. NOW I have my two week summer vacation before school starts on August 5th!

It was an interesting clutch. I bred these two snakes last year and got some babies that were similar, but I got a lot more like the momma snake this year than last year. They are all very beautiful, and it's fun to have them. Now I'm preparing for the mother snake to double clutch.
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~Sasheena

Love the variation in that clutch

Congrats Sash, beautiful babies.
Disastrous year for a lot of us, myself included, from what I've read/heard. Must be something in the air
The first 2 of my total of 11 (yes, that's correct, only 11 this year!!) cali eggs are due to hatch in about 12 days, and the other 9 about a week later. And I STILL have my fingers crossed about those first 2 and a few in the second clutch...wish us luck.
~Roo
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"Klaatu...Verata...Nicht--cough, cough, cough!"

Good luck with yours... I look forward to pictures of nice healthy hatchlings.

I've got a good bunch of 17 babies now. Pretty sad when there were 71 eggs laid this year!

Clutches:

#1: 2/10 (20% viable babies)
#2: 2/5 (40% viable babies)
#3: 4/21 (approximately 20% viable babies)
#4: 9/12 (75% viable babies)
#5: 0/15 (0% viable babies)
#6: .... not due to hatch until September. 4 eggs, 3 with veins, 1 appears to be infertile, even though it doesn't look like a slug.

Ah well.

Now I can have fun planning for next year... and if that one is a "wash" then we'll just give it all up!

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~Sasheena

I think it's been a bad year for most people. I've had more infertile eggs, and eggs go bad during incubation, than ever before. It doesn't seem to be an isolated situation. I've spoken with several people over the last few weeks that have had the same problem. In my opinion, it seems to be an environmental situation, since the cases have been scattered throughout the country. Let's hope Mother Nature treats the animal kingdome a little better next year.

Brandon Osborne

I appreciate knowing I'm not alone. Last year was such a good year with my two clutches and 100% hatch rate... I've felt that this year has humbled me (and perhaps I needed it!). '

I was pretty sad too, to find that my last gravid snake disappeared just when she should have been laying her eggs. She was the one whose entire clutch died in early incubation. She looked to have a good sized second clutch and while I thought it could be a bad group like the first group, I was still anxious to hopefully get some viable eggs out of her.

I do have good news though... she reappeared (SUPER thin like she'd just laid eggs) just this evening... found her crawling on the mouse cages in the mouse house. So not all is bad news... and those hatchlings I do have are pretty nice. Next year can't help but be better. And even if it was just some sort of "cosmic bad year" for snakes.... I've re-examined everything about my breeding, feeding, incubation, brumation, etc and made plans for things that can only help, even if none of them had anything to do with the season's disappointments.

Some of my new plans for the next year:

No-substrate incubation, or if I don't do that, I will at least try other methods of incubation than vermiculite.

Bottled water for the animals to drink now, and always, and to moisten the vermiculite or substrate or be in the no-substrate container or what have you.

No pesticides around the mice or snakes.

A variety of males. (I only had two males responsible for the five clutches laid. The other two pairs of snakes bred produced no eggs).

So next year will be good.... at least my hopes for it are big. Now I just have my nice 17 hatchlings (out of 71 eggs laid) and 4 more eggs to keep an eye on.
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~Sasheena

how you have a really nice clutch of aberrants!! congrads!! dave