Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well I thought I would at least show the "upside" to all the problems I have had this year in breeding corns. The three babies I kept and was able to get feeding are pictured in this and the next two messages. I felt them over to see what level of kinking was still apparant. This first one is the baby that looks the best. I opened the incubation box to see if he'd come out of his egg... and the next thing I know I'm chasing him all across my desk, he was so feisty at the beginning and gets more and more feisty. So I named him Jumanji. I believe he will be a very beautiful okeetee/lookeetee when he matures. He is 4 months old in this photo (taken today)

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~Sasheena

Here is Hope, she's the smaller baby... she was a non-feeder for a whlie, but finally figured it out. She still has the worst kinking, a couple of obvious kinks, but she's still thriving. I think she'll look like her momma... a beautiful reverse okeetee.

She's a full sibling to Jumanji in the previous picture.

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~Sasheena

Here's my striped normal baby who only has one very tiny kink that can only be felt by someone who is actually looking for them. She and her sister hatched out fine, but her sister just got kinkier and kinkier and never bothered to eat and was eventually euthanized. Striker here was very different from her sister... she bit me before she even fully exited the egg. She's het Anery and possible het Amel. I'm looking forward to what she looks like as an adult.

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~Sasheena

I am hoping that next year will be better for you...
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Paula
19 Corns,6 Ratsnakes, 1 Ball Python, 2 Hognose
Snake Addict
www.tlcreptiles.net

That okeetee has some good looking orange/yellow at such an early age, as well as some nice black borders around his saddles. Would love to see how this guy turns out. Post some future pics.

Steve

The BPs you posted in the other forum were nice too! Glad it seems things are straightening out!
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Cheryl Marchek
AKA JM
Check out my website at:
The Red Dragons Den

Beautiful red on that one!!! Love them okeetees! (Got some myself!) I didn't get to read your mishap with your babies this year. Where they hatched at a cool temp? That's what happened to all 14 of my baby eastern kingsnakes last year. My son turned down the AC too much for one week, while I was in Florida! I lost all 14 babies. They all developed fully, but were all severly kinked and never made it out of the egg! I was NOT happy to say the least! And yes, I decided to let my son live!

Zee

Well this last season, my first to breed corns, I had 3 '02 corns, and one '01 or '00 corn. Crossed the male ('02 stripe normal) to all three females. Actually he was living with two of the females, then I decided that one of the two females was too small to breed, and pulled both females out not being sure that he had even gotten interested in them. I put in the third female and within moments they were locked up.

Results of those three breedings:

The smallest female was an Anery Stripe. It became obvious she was gravid, and she laid 12 eggs.... 6 were slugs.... she didn't seem to have any problem passing the eggs. 5 eggs went full term, one died midterm. Of those five 2 hatched out, the others wobbled quite dramatically for about 24 hours and then didn't move... I slit them and found 3 dead-in-egg hatchlings, all normal stripes with jaw deformities/kinks/bulging foreheads. The two that hatched on their own looked perfect on first inspection, but within a couple of days it became obvious that they had some kinks.... one ate one didn't. The one who ate was pictured earlier in this thread.

The second smallest female was a normal het motley I got from Kathy Love who was selling them for a friend. She laid 10 large eggs (twice the size of the anery's eggs) Her container of vermiculite was a bit too moist and I spent most of the incubation time trying to cut back on the moistness. Changed vermiculite twice, both times completely dry, still got a bit too moist. Had some mold problems. Two of those eggs hatched on their own, the rest I slit. All, including the two who hatched on their own, had some level of deformities... bulging forehead, deformed or missing jaw, mild to severe kinking. One was dead-in-egg and looked perfect except for the umbilical wrapped around him which appears to be the cause of death. (tied in a knot around its middle). The two who hatched on their own were "keepers" and the rest were euthanized. The keepers never ate, were offered live, f/t, fresh killed, brained, deli-cupped, I offered live and f/t fence lizard, nad live and f/t hatchling house gecko. NOTHING tempted them. Only thing good about that clutch is that I learned that my male and my female were het amel, because one of the two keepers was amel.

This girl laid a second clutch, 5 eggs... one was a slug, and one never had veins. Only one of those hatched, and she was severely deformed. The other two were dead in the egg. Deformed. The one who was alive was euthanized. The only contribution she gave me was the knowledge that both of the parent snakes were also het anery, because she was a snow.

The third female was a reverse okeetee. She laid 21 eggs 39 days after hooking up with the male for the first time. They seemed fine. One of them ruptured a couple weeks into incubation. This was the driest of the incubation boxes. I couldn't see why the egg burst. The remaining 20 were fine up until day 58 of incubation. On day 58 two more eggs started to leak. I opened one, and could tell that the baby, who was alive, was a little too premature to make it. He was euthanized (he had a big bulgey forehead). The other egg ... I put a bandaide on... and it went full term and hatched on its own. Of the 19 remaining eggs, about 4 or 5 of them opened up their own eggs... the rest i opened up. Some were dead-in-egg, most were alive but too deformed to open their own shells. All of them had some level of kinking, and/or deformed/missing jaws, and/or bulging foreheads. The four that I kept out of the five that slit their own shell were two amels, and two normals, with very minimal kinking/problems. I would have kept five, but the one with the bandaided shell only made it half way out of the shell before dying. Of the four keepers, the one normal and the one reverse okeetee made it the others never ate.

Some say it could have been genetic... but that is highly unlikely as I got near 100% defective corns. With perfect parent corns, and with all three females from three sources (one from the same source as the male, but unrelated, one from Kathy Love, and one from Rich Z.) it seemed impossible for them all to carry the same recessive gene. SO... it was probably environmental... could have been the AC failure and 88* temperature they were exposed to for 12 hours. Could have been the tap water I was using to water the mice, the snakes, and moisten the vermiculite. could have been the ant-spray hubby sprayed around the outside of the mouse house (outside shed for hte mice). Could have been bad vermiculite, or too moist vermiculite, etc. The kingsnake eggs incubated at the same time and in the same manner all hatched fine.

SO.... After all my tales of woe, I have three nice babies that I will keep or sell as pets at a reduced price to my students (not to make a profit, but to instill a sense of worth in the animals for the students so they won't treat them as disposable). Next year I will use (and am using) mice that have only had bottled water to drink, snakes that have only had bottled water to drink, and I will try to (cross fingers) have no AC failure so the temps will be more constant. I might try a no-substrate method of incubating the eggs, thus cutting down on the moisture the eggs are in touch with. We'll see what luck I have next year... plus I will use a different male for the normal het motley, possibly for the stripe. The reverse okeetee died after laying her eggs . I have an anery het motley I might try with the male from last year, and I also have a proven pair of cornsnakes that have together produced beautiful babies. With these modifications I will know if cornsnake breeding is for me or not. If it doesn't work out, I'll be selling a beautiful 2.3 of cornsnakes. But hopefully it works!

In any case, my little keepers, in spite of their flaws, are showing themselves up as very beautiful babies. I look forward to watching them grow.
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~Sasheena

if you didn't have bad luck you wouldn't have no luck at all! Murphy came to stay, huh? I am very sorry to hear that! I hope that doesn't happen to me next year - especially with that yellow/golden female. I eliminated one variable already: They've all been fed WELL!!! They'll all go into brumation in ten days 100% healthy (not gorged of course). What happens from then is in god's hands!
Thank you for sharing, maybe this'll save the lives of other cornsnakes as some folks who read this (including me) will take corn snake breeding a little more seriously and keep a better vigil on the eggs as well . . .

I am an expert on everything, but I know so little and have so much to learn! - Carsten Zoldy -

Zee

Actually the above was only my accounting of my cornsnake woes.... I did SLIGHTLY better with my kingsnakes....

I bred my high white cal king to my newport (as I had done the previous year and gotten 8 perfect eggs)... got 12 eggs, 2 died after the AC failure, and grew maggots (I'd placed all the egg containers in the less pristine "mouse house" while the house AC was fixed... that took several days). I was able to separate the maggoty eggs from the good eggs. Two others shriveled up, and didn't seem likely to hatch, but they did. One was dead in egg full term, the other nine were fine except for one, who was wrapped in his umbilical... I knew nature dictated he be left, but I couldn't. I snipped his umbilical, and the little 5 inch guy survived.... until one of our cats got him. (ARGH). He ate like crazy while I had him, but never really grew proportionally with the food he was eating. I was sad to lose him too. BUT I did get eight PERFECT kink-and-deformity-free california kings.

My high white was also bred to a desert phase cal king... she was still gravid during the AC failure. I couldn't move her out to the mouse house while I had the AC failure, so I put her in the coolest spot in the house, and gave her a shallow but large water dish she could cool herself in....she finally (16 days after pre-lay shed) laid her 15 eggs... but alas, they all died and when my stepkids and I opened them up they were all about 1 inch long tubes of flesh colored snake... with little black grains of sand sized eyes. She became gravid again, to double clutch, and I was hopeful she would have decent eggs the second time... and then she escaped right when she was due to lay! When she returned she was thin as anything! 60 days later the outdoor cats brought me one half one one perfect cal king hatchling, with umbilical still attached... so the eggs must have hatched! Next year hopefully I'll have more luck.

I also bred my Apalachicola kings... after breeding them the female got sick with a RI. I warmed her up and dosed her up, and hoped she would recuperate.. she shed off cycle and never ever produced eggs (she was proven the previous year with the same male). When she was better, and all fattened up, I thought I would try to breed her one more time, but when I went to get the male, he was dead.

And finally I bred my Arizona Mountain Kings, but must have missed the right time, because she never had any eggs.

It was a disconcerting year! I'm still on the lookout for a good male apalachicola to breed to my female next year. But I just have not had luck.

I guess this is partly why I'm glad it's not ME with the Golden Snake... if I was I don't think I would trust myself to be able to propagate her properly... I would turn it over to someone with a proven track record. Sounds like you're doing everything right and I am very anxious to follow the success of your breeding attempts.

Here's a picture of one of my corns:

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~Sasheena

I especially love the color on those okeetees. Sounds like the temp was your problem. I had the same happen to me this year just not to that extent. I had to swap rooms for the snakes and lost about 1/3 of mu eggs and I had an excessive amount of nonfeeders this year too. They spent about 3 days out in the main part of the house where the temps are not so controlled. Oh well, live and learn, huh? You ended up with some very pretty hatchlings!

Cheryl

Nice looking babies.
I hope things go better for you in the upcomming season.
good luck
Jimmy