A lot of people say that if a snake can't get out of its egg on its own, it is better to let it go, then to perpetuate bad genes. Most of the time I agree with the sense of this argument. However one of my hatchlings, named "Tiny" has made me believe that sometimes intervention is good.

Tiny was in a clutch of 12 cal king eggs. The clutch was exposed to high heats early on, and two of the eggs died. One of those eggs was in a clump of two eggs with Tiny's egg. I separated the bad, maggot-ridden egg from Tiny's egg, knowing that I could have lost Tiny as well in the separation. As it was, there was a weakened part of Tiny's shell that had a small bulge from increased pressure and decreased strength. But Tiny's egg continued to flourish.

When the eggs began hatching, I waited until 48 hours after the first pip and pipped the rest. Several of the eggs were looking bad and I had considered them to be lost causes. One was nearly 60% collapsed. When I saw that hatchling inside the collapsed egg, I dubbed her "Puny" because she was so tiny. And then Tiny poked his little head out of his egg, and sure enough, he was miniscule. He struggled to leave his egg and finally got 3/4ths of the way out, before his problem became obvious: his umbilical cord (or whatever it's called) was wrapped around his middle and so tight I could see the constriction almost making him "wasp waisted". I could see, after another 12 hours, that he would die if I didn't do something.

After a lot of thought, I decided that the only solution was to snip his umbilical. I figured he would bleed to death, get an infection, or be too weak to eat, so the odds were not in his favor. But he would definately die if I didn't do something. So I snipped his cord and he did bleed, but he didn't die!

A couple of days after he was pulled from his egg, his dangling cord had been absorbed and he looked like he was going to make it. Since I had a newborn litter of mice, I decided to try to give him the runt of the litter. I reasoned he needed food as soon as possible if he wanted to live. The runt newborn mouse had a head barely the size of a pea. Instantly, the moment the pinky was in the container with Tiny, he struck. An hour later, he was barely up to the eyeballs in swallowing the head of the itty bitty pinky mouse. I took my snippers and cut the body from the head, and within fifteen more minutes he had downed the pinky head.

Four days later, when the first of his siblings were ready to eat, I had an even smaller newborn pinky, so I offered it to Tiny. Ferociously he attacked the pinky, and had it swallowed in less than thirty minutes.

He ate twice more before shedding almost three weeks out of the egg. Every time he's been offered food, he pounces on it. It makes me feel good. A couple of meals ago he took two newborn pinks, and his size is now barely the size of his clutch-mates when they hatched. When he hatched he was barely six inches long. Today, after noting that my mice weren't likely to produce pinkies anytime soon, I pulled some frozen-thawed pinkies and defrosted them. This was the first frozen meal I would offer tiny and my other baby snakes. Typically, Tiny immediately pounced on his mouse, constricting it fiercely before finally swallowing it. All of his siblings ate frozen/thawed as well.

Anyway, Tiny is one of the most remarkable baby snakes I've ever seen. His will to live is larger than all of his siblings combined. When hubby and I were choosing "keepers" from the clutch, he won the day.
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~Sasheena