Terms?

[Ethrin]

Helsa,
I am completely new to this and I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the terms, like pipping,kinking,het, and slugs. Can anyone help me out,please?

[Sybella]

Sure. :)

Pipping: That's when the baby uses his or her egg tooth to slit the egg before coming out into the world. They usually make a slit (or sometimes several LOL!) and then remain in the egg for several hours to a day or so before emerging. The act of making the slice in the shell is pipping. Some people cut open the egg for them and that is also called pipping.

Kinking: I am assuming that you're talking about spinal kinks, right? Sometimes if the temperature fluctuates too much while the baby is incubating, or if there is trauma to the snake after it has hatched, there can be some damage to the vertibrae. Just as we end up with larger, scar-tissue ridden vertibrae, so can snakes. Usually, there is just a lump on the spine, or a few lumps, but sometimes there are permanently bent spots, or lack of movement from fused segments. I had a kingsnake a while back who had two knots and the vertibrae was fused between them. Consequently, when he coiled, he had two 90 degree bends in those places.

Het: That is short for heterozygous, meaning the latent traits of the animal. Just as people can be carriers for different color eyes, reptiles also can pass on color traits that they don't outwardly show. So, if you have a normal corn and it mates with a ghost corn, it will outwardly appear normal but 50 percent of the genetic makeup will be from that ghost. So, the offspring would be normal het ghost.

Slugs: When a snake lays eggs, sometimes a few are obviously bad from the start. A colubrid egg should look white or white-ish and have the feel of a marshmallow. If it is yellow and nasty looking when first laid, it is refered to as a slug.

[Willis Wildlife Enterprises]

A bit more accurately, a slug is an infertile egg, but looks just like what Sybella describes...yellow and nasty...plus soft and limp.

[Ethrin]

Wonderful, thank you so much, that really helps.:)