Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Of the clutch of eggs I currently have hatching, the first one to hatch left the egg about this same time (10pm) last night and his temperment has been a nice curious one. He's been active and checking out the cage and doesn't appeared threatened or scared of being reached for and handled. Usually black rat babies like to do a lot snapping and tail rattling, but not this one (heck I get a corn snake babies that act like that too). However, he totally surprised me by eating a pinky tonight and he's barely a day old! I've never had a baby snake do that before - they almost always wait until after their first shed to think about eating. I think I have a winner with this one. Can't wait to see how the rest of the clutch turns out...7 have left their eggs and burrowed down into the vermiculite - still waiting on the last two to leave their eggs.

I always love the anticipation of hatching days. My next one is slated for the first week of October (2 emory rat eggs).
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PHWyvern

Congrats on your success. I think you mentioned before getting those from a wild found nest, right?

Usually babies don't eat right away because they enter the shed cycle or they still have too much yoke left from being in the egg. I don't usually offer a meal unless I think they look hungry. Obviously you have one that's ready to get started with life

Let us know when the GP rats hatch. I'd like to see pics of them.

Terry

The emory's eggs should be hatching first or second week of October. They are from my 14 year old female (she could actually be older than that..got her as an adult back in 1994 so the age estimate is a bit conservative). She has always been housed with a male corn since I've owned her and in all that time only produced 3 clutches. I hope to have better success with this 3rd clutch. The 1st clutch hatched out 8 big healthy babies that ate like pigs for 2 months then they all just stopped eating and a month later were dead. It couldn't have been the food source or enviornmental conditions as I had other baby snakes at the time and they were fine. The 2nd clutch proved infertile which was a bummer as the father (an amel) had passed away from age related illness a month prior to the eggs being laid and I had hopes of having something to remind me of him. For this 3rd clutch, the father is unknown. I have her with two males (amel and anery) now so not sure which is actually the father, but most likely the amel I usually see her cuddled up with him and he was with her in the egg laying box after she laid the eggs - he was curled up on around her as she was curled around the eggs... don't know if he was trying to help protect the nest or not lol. She had 6 eggs of which only 2 were fertile.

As for the black rat nest, yes, the eggs were apparently in a mulch pile and a front end loader was picking up a bucket of mulch from the pile when the eggs spilled out.

I did get a couple of shots of the first two that hatched that didn't burrow down into the vermiculite to hide like the others.

Picture order is:

Hatchling #1 (the one that ate the pinky last night)

Hatchling #2 (in a snappy defensive posture as he wasn't happy with being touched/handled)

Hatchling #2 again ( in a calmer pose)
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PHWyvern

Nice black rat babies. I always liked catching a couple in spring when I used to live in se. Ohio. They would come to our pond to eat spring peepers.

Post pix of your baby Emory's when they hatch. This is one of my favorite species. I keep a couple Northern Plains rats, emoryi, and Southern Plains rats, meahllmorum. I'm thinking of starting a creamsicle project next year by crossing an amel. corn with my emoryi. Is your amel. a corn snake?

TC

Where are those from?

>>Where are those from?

Southern MD, PG County locale. If the female we saw in the woods on Friday that climbing down the side of a poplar tree is the mother (near the general area where the nest was found), then these are gonna be some big snakes some day LOL.
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PHWyvern

That's great. Next time put a pinky in the box AS they hatch. You'll be surprised at the fact that some will eat then. I have had rats and corns, kings and milks literally crawl from the egg and eat a pinky.
When one of the "tougher" ssp. do that it's easy to decide on the holdbacks!
:Mark