Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Wondering if I should rinse dried egg contents off of the hatchling easterns?
Also, one of the hatchlings still has about 1 inch of the umbilical attached, should I do anything with this?

Thanks for the help!

In my experience, just putting them in individual cages with a water dish and paper towel as substrate does the job.
Doug T

Doug Taylor Reptiles

What was your hatch ratio and how many days incubation?

S Smith

I started with 10 seemingly good eggs.
Then 6 went bad pretty quick (2 weeks).

At approx. 6 weeks, one of the remaing four started to sink in, and eventually went bad.

All 6 of the eggs were found to have no embryos, thus not fertile.

3 hatched out, one had complications. I think I "scared' it out of the egg too early. Instead of going back in the egg, it must have left the egg. (A similar event happened with another breeder I spoke with). Because the snake left the egg too soon, the umbilical opening didn't have time to "pinch off" the yolk sac and "placenta". This snake lost all of it's yolk
through the umbilical opening, which needed to be stitched shut by a vet.

So far so good with the patient, If I can get it to eat in the next two weeks it should be ok.

I've bred a variety of snakes in the past, and I can say now that Indigo snakes are not the same. This whole experience has been like starting anew. If I can offer any advice to future breeders of indigos it would be this... Indigo snakes not only need more time to breed and incubate, they also need much more time to hatch from the the egg. I would definitly not eagerly pull a recently emerged hatchling out of the incubation box either; but rather let it rest some 6 - 8 hours afterwards. I would recommend at least 48 hours after they pip to even consider poking around or removing them from the incubator.

BTW all are reds, like both of the parents. They have not been sexed yet.

Thanks for posting.

Out of 17 eggs I ended up with 5 red throats. 4 were only yolk.
3 died mid term. The other 5 were fully formed embryos that died
for what reason I don't know. I did everything I could to keep
the temp at 75 degrees and was suprised that the first pip happened on day 100. I was aiming at the 115 to 120 mark.
The only thing I can point to is that they were way too wet
the first 3 days and had swollen to almost twice the size.
I'm content with the 5 I got on my first try.

Seth

Congratulations. You went full circle with breeding. The hatchling should absorb remaining tissue into its body. Cutting could bring excessive bleeding. If hatchlings have enclosure with moist paper towel in one half and dry in the other things will clean themselves. It will be interesting to watch their initial plumpness disappear after their first shed.