Reptile & Amphibian Forums

She when down last night, its been five days since she shed and two days since she fed last.

As you can see, she lost little weight, she immediately went to water and made a mess, hahahahahahaha, she also passed feces.

Here are the eggs under glass.

Heres a pic showing the nesting chamber, I had to not use a flash for this. To me, building a nesting chamber is very important to a female.

Heres a closeup of the eggs.

More history, this is her first clutch, shes about 33" long 24 months old and she laid 12 good eggs. She has no skin folds and otherwise does not look like she just laid. Of course shes lighter, but other then that appears normal.

To relate this to the thread below, efficient nesting is very important in the conservation of energy. In my opinion, everyday that passes once the female is ready to lay, causes a huge amount of non necessary physical stress. This of course is reflected on any further clutches.

In the thread below, we discussed temperature choices as a means of conserving energy, but as you can understand, there are other ways to conserve energy. As Tom said, reproduction is all about usable expendable energy.

A little editorial, I see where there are millions of questions to be asked, and I see great purpose in that, but to agree or disagree is absolutely meaningless and useless. I have to wonder, are the people who disagree with facts, so confident in their abilities that they think, it cannot be done better by anyone else? I understand if your experience has reflected something else, of course it has, but that is no reason to believe your right or wrong. With monitors are tell folks, the thing about working with animals is, your only right for a moment, then you start over with all the chances of being wrong. Success and failure are both only momentary things, once they happen, you go on to try again. Surely you understand, you can succeed today and then fail tomorrow or next year.

What all this means is, there are many ways to full fill these snakes needs, and each will express different results. All in all, the results do the talking. Later FR

Is that all? wow that is great. what is her normal body weight? i am one of those brooksi fanatics that stands by a rule of sorts, 40" and 400g for breeding females. what does it mean? i don't know. in my skull i have a few ideas rattling around in free space, all with the best intentions. -have good body weight (lipids)to stimulate hormones for follicle production, enough energy stored to get through egg laying period from preshed to finish- a period with alot of activity w/o much if any consumption. a body size large enough to pass eggs, muscle mass to overcome lactic acid buildup, anything to prevent dystocia. ya ya ya ya ya...
so it seems you have bred animals this size before. very very good, especially since her corpus has emerged in such fine shape. how do you expect this female will grow over the next year? how about those nice white eggs she laid? are they normal size/mass? and the hatchlings, do they emerge normal size, full of life and with an appetite? however i believe incubation strategy has as much/more to do with how the hatchlings fare, relative to mom's contributions(btw, incubation is the most fun for me in this hobby, and i like to think of eggs as having an independent life stage whereas most do not).

I think your statement was apples to other kinds of apples. 33" is not small for a female calking. Its about normal. Actually I just guessed, then I went and measured her and she is 36".

Calkings can and do reproduce as small as 24" without incident. Both in captivity and in nature.

It seems from your post, your a numbers fella. You know, the numbers tell you what to do. I am afraid I am not wired that way. If a female cycles, she is suppose to breed and lay eggs, it does not matter what size she is. My job is to support her in anyway I can. Often that means offerring smaller food items then normal.

About your other questions, I have been breeding cal kings since 1964 or so, is that right PreacherPat? Many of the types being bred now are from me. Like albinos, both banded and striped as well as abberants. Also, black & whites and such. Thats 41 years of breeding calkings, dang.

With that experience, I learned, if these eggs fail or the neonates do not feed well(a calking not feeding well, thats unheard of) it would be something I did, like overheat them or dry them out, or drop them while juggling them.

I surely understand what it takes to be successful with kingsnakes(I also bred many of other types too. Many world first breedings.) I also understand, its my responsibility to make the right decisions in a timely manner. For me, its not about not knowing. The question is always about application, not knowledge. Remember, the knowledge to breed kingsnakes is widespread and common.

I also have no need to weight snakes or any such thing. That curiousity was fullfilled decades ago. It did not take long to understand what a healthy snake appeared like.

Also, something that has been bred commonly for over forty years is of little interest to science. So weighting and measuring for sciences sake is sorta lost in the decades.

Please understand, after forty years, the normal is of little interest. It is a joy to see the exceptional. I come to this forum because occasionally there is exceptional.

I too, am fasinated by nesting, eggs, and such. There is far more to it then sucking out the eggs and hatching them. The effects, both physically and mentally on the female is very much neglected and dismissed. Thanks FR

no i am not really a numbers guy it is just a guideline in a wide world of variation. most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't, i learn more from observing the failures than from the successes.

back when dinosaurs were discovered, many paleontologists considered them to be warm blooded and similar to birds. somewhere in the 1920's and 30's that view changed to slow plodding lethargic creatures. now take a look, they are again considered as they were initially. point? you have views and observations that may be obvious to you and others with your experience, but somwhere at some expo or in some collection over that last 40 years it is hidden and not in the forefront of the hobby.i have 10 years experience and 10 years of data...more than some but obviously not enough to predict all patterns of behavior in captivity or in the wild. probably the best thing you could do for me and others would be to gather your experience/observations and present it/continue to present it. if it would not be boring.

I do agree with your outlook and in a big way. I too learn more from failures, which are common if you keep trying different things.

I also do not take anything we(me included) say as, set in stone. I do take that I see snakes do, in both nature and in captivity, as important. But as you know, its always subject to our current level of understanding. As our current level of understanding changes, so should our interpitations of our observations.

That above paragraph is very very important to understand. Maybe we should devote a thread to that.

What I find very exciting is, many years ago I left kingsnakes and worked with pythons, pythons have a different type of nesting behavior and different requirements for nesting. Then I moved to monitors, which are indeed similar to birds in nesting behavior/s, now I get to come back to colubrids and apply some of what was important to the others, back to kingsnakes. Thanks FR

Hey Frank.

Birds again???

And people give me the "your friggin' nuts" googoo rolling eyes when I call lepidus and willardi in our study sites "rattle-finches."

It all comes around huh???

Knowledge is like time: always moving, you never have enough, and we rarely know what to do with the amount we have.

Good stuff. Hugh

thats awsome frank!, man 12eggs from a 36inch female!!! woohooo my 44inch female only gave me 12 but they are HUGE eggs so im not complainin here is mine in her box(hey it works) love and cant wait to try some nesting tips next season on mine ttys,,,,,,,,,thomas