Humidity and Eggs

Well this year's clutch of kingsnake eggs is really confusing me. The one egg on the top of the pile (smallest egg, but still quite large) is about 45% collapsed. I thought the container needed more moisture, even though it felt moist enough, so I added more, and the other eggs showed signs of being too humid... so I left the container open to dry out a bit, and the collapsed egg (which didn't get larger with the added humidity) now is barely starting to plump up... it has veins, but the level of "collapse-idge" tells me this egg is in peril. I can't separate it from the rest and heightened humidity doesn't plump it up. Should I just give up on it, and work to maintain the proper humidity levels for the other 11 eggs? Perhaps this is just one of those "fertile eggs that will go bad"?

When I get home from work I'll snap a picture to show what I'm talking about. The container they are in is not air tight, but it is almost airtight. I haven't really been monitoring the temperatures or the specific humidity as I figure the temps are probably on the low side now, and will get to the hot side later as the summer warms up. There is no artificial source of heat. Just room temperature.

Don't sweat it Sasheena, I routinely have cal king and other clutches stick together. I don't hover over them waiting on the female to lay, and often it's another day later before I get around to putting them in the incubator.
I'm a little quicker removing the python eggs, but they still stick together quite often.

When I have an egg begin to dimple that is on top of the pile and cannot contact the substrate, I have a simple fix. I take a paper towel and wet it. Wring out all the water and lay it over the eggs. The top egg fills back out and all is well. You may have to moisten the paper towel every couple of days until the egg is filled out completely.
I almost never lose a kingsnake egg that is fertile to begin with regardless of how high the pile is.

Adding water to the substrate in this case can easily do more harm than good. The eggs that are in contact with it will absorb too much moisture and endanger the eggs by the time you get the relative humidity up.

Ken, when Queenie was laying her eggs I had another snake on my computer desk also laying eggs (strange story), and was removing her eggs one at a time. Since Queenie showed every sign of being distressed when I checked on her (distressed at MY presence) and since she was struggling to lay each egg (they were the size of extra large chicken eggs!), I felt that it was better for the snake on my desk to focus on her. I did remove eggs a couple of times from Queenie, but they had bonded together in two clumps one of four eggs and one of six eggs, and one clump of two that was so recently laid I was able to separate them. Last year she laid all eight eggs in one huge clump while I slept, again, impossible to separate them.

As far as an incubator, there is no need to have an incubator when you live in Arizona. (as long as your AC is working). It's slightly on the cool side for incubating eggs right at the moment, at least at night, and during the day the AC keeps the temperature at the perfect level. Last year I had 16 good eggs laid, and 16 good eggs hatch. Since Queenie laid her eggs a few weeks earlier, and it was a colder spring last year, I did make a home made incubator in a ten gallon aquarium, but this year it doesn't seem necessary.

Clay, thanks also for your suggestion. I'm going to implement that now and see how the top egg does, which is still quite deflated (but has veins and appears quite alive). I'll do my best for all the eggs I have. It's actually very interesting to me how the eggs in the "driest" substrate have the least variability. The "wetter" containers of eggs seem to have a few eggs slightly dimpled. It doesn't quite make sense, but since my one container with 15 corn eggs in it has plump healthy eggs, I don't want to upset the balance by changing the humidity levels too much. I'll be misting them all in a minute, but only lightly.

Thank you both for your suggestions. They do help me. I have two more snakes that need to lay their eggs and then I should be done barring double clutching. I have one Cal king that looks like she has 30 inches of solid EGGS in her.. she shed 6 days ago and might lay her eggs while I'm at school today. (but I'm guessing she's waiting for the weekend). And I have an Arizona Mountain King that has three distinct lumps in her, so I believe she's gravid though I haven't witnessed copulation. I sure hope she is, since she's with a loaner male, and she's the only Pyro I have! I hope she has a male baby!

That's okay. It's just easier to do the "on the shelf" incubation, and since it works on hatching out the snakes, it should be enough. I did the moist paper towel over the king eggs today and when I got home the "shrunken" egg had puffed up a bit. I also has a small "green" spot on one end. I'm guessing that it's still an iffy situation. *sigh*

As far as temperature determination of teh gender of colubrids I don't believe anyone has been able to determine this. I can give you my own *VERY LIMITED* experiences with this....

Last year one of my snakes laid 8 eggs. Those were incubated at 78- 80 for the first thirty days, and then 82 for the next couple of weeks, then I did my best to keep the temperatures low, but they got up to 86 pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks. All of the babies seemed to be male. (one was not sexed before it died)

The other snake had her eggs thirty days later than the first clutch. The temps were around 82 for the first couple of weeks, and then consistently at around 84 - 86 which was the coolest I could keep it in the 1950's house I lived in last year. on day 50 their temperatures spiked to 101 degrees. (AC failed). They were at those temperatures most the day. The family vacated the house until the AC was fixed the next morning. The eggs were placed in the only room with its own AC and by the morning were at 90 degrees...and were hatching. 6 of those were females. Of course this is a limited group of snakes, and if I were to generalize my results to all snakes, then most of the snakes hatched out would be male, and only those with overheating would be females.

This year we live in a house with a modern AC unit. If I wasn't so distracted by the sudden information just before the eggs started being laid that I was going to be a mom (of a 13 year old), I would have been more closely overseeing every aspect of the beginning of the egg incubation. With final exams, and impending motherhood (she's "due" in 3 weeks!) it's difficult to make sure that everything is done perfectly in the snakey universe! Probably this weekend I'll get the eggs all checked out and redo their incubation containers to make sure that everything is perfectly optimal.

Anyway, way too much info, I'm sure.

I look forward to learning about your experiments Ken. Especially regarding the pursuit of the snow and blizzard kings. Have you seen Kerby Ross's website? He runs "Lonesome Valley Reptiles" here in Arizona and has some SUPERB snakes! If you haven't been to his website, you SHOULD go... I think you'll be salivating!

Originally posted by Drunkenblade
I'm working on some genetic problems, If I could link the Albino gene to sex, X or Y chrom. then It would be easier to predict the trait before hatching,

To date no recessive mutation has ever been linked to sex in snakes, and I seriously doubt one will be. That aside however, what exactly are you hoping to predict? I'm missing the line of thought here.

That is if I could solve the Incubation Temp. ratio for sex Too. Leopard Geckos are so easy to control sex I've always followed a 80* 85* 90* rule. Kings seem to follow thier own rules when it comes to sex determination.

I feel it's safe to say that after 25-30 years of regular breeding of kings and other snakes, if TDSD existed in this group of animals it would have been noted by now. It has never been seen to occur with any snake species.
It's not that the kings follow their own rules, they simply follow the rules that apply for the vast majority of the animal kingdom, the sex is genetically determined at the time of fertilization.
Snakes do not have x and y chromosomes as humans do, they have Z and W as in birds. It works the same however, with the exception that in snakes, it is the female that has the dissimilar chromosomes rather than the male as it is with humans.

Please point out anywhere I stated that temperature does not affect the sex determination in reptiles.
I specifically stated that it has never been seen to occur in snakes, including kingsnakes.
TDSD is well documented in tortoises, crocodilians, and several species of geckos, but not snakes. I have no idea where you determined that was what I was claiming, but please read my previous post again for clarification.

By all means however, if you wish to embark on a project to find the as yet unseen connection of temperature and sex determination in kingsnakes have at it. Perhaps you will be the one to discover what everyone else has failed to see over the last quarter century.

A last note, my wording was probably poor in my last post concerning the 25-30 years. I was not claiming I have bred kingsnakes for that length of time, but that is the general time frame in which they have been bred in higher numbers in the community as a whole. I have only produced them for the last 13 years personally.

And so hard this year???

I don't remember any of these difficulties I'm having this year compared to last year.

Well of my original 12 cal king eggs, the one I was worried about is now a most beautiful blue green color, and it smells. Another egg is turning that color now too. I changed the eggs to new less-wet substrate in hopes of helping the eggs. But then we had an AC malfunction, and I'm being PLAGUED with problems.

The eggs "cooked" at 88 degrees for 12 hours or so, and now are out in my mouse shed. a BAD place for them to be, but we're on our third day with no AC in the house, the mice are the only ones who have AC! But the Cal King eggs are now plagued with fruit fly looking critters. The container I have them in is not absolutely airtight, and I'm battling bugaboos. Tomorrow I'll try to purchase a new container that will be completely airtight, and place the eggs in that container, but I'm afraid that the bugs will have laid eggs in the one bad egg! ARGH... what does a person do? We won't have AC until tomorrow some time, so I can't change them out of the "mouse house". The REALLY bad egg is on the top of a clump. The second "going bad" egg is in a clump of only two eggs, and it's companion is not bad. They are connected only loosely, and I *think* I can separate them if the blue one goes REALLY bad.

I'm starting to despair of getting ANY hatchlings this year. And worst of all I have another snake getting ready to lay her eggs at any time, only I'm afraid the heat has adversely affected her too. It's 10 days since she shed, and she's still restless. I've given her a shallow water dish to soak in to escape the heat. The eggs appear to be closer than ever to her vent, but I'm not sure she's quite ready to have them. In a way I'm hoping that she holds off on laying the eggs until after the AC is back working. Then I won't at least have to worry about putting the new eggs out in the "dangerous" zone of the mouse-house.

Any constructive ideas on what I might do? I did try the paper towel that was suggested, and I think it helped as much as possible, but the one egg might have always been doomed to a short short egg-life.

Strangely enough, now that I've changed to a dry-er substrate, there is now condensation showing on the sides of the containers.... but I'm thinking that is partly due to the environment... here in the house, it's VERY dry, but out in the mouse house, with several hundred mice and rats breathing, it's much more humid.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Note to Self: Keep all earth-shaking decisions/changes to brumation season and all will be well. Have these changes during egg laying/breeding season, and you'll go insane!

Originally posted by Clay Davenport
To date no recessive mutation has ever been linked to sex in snakes, and I seriously doubt one will be.

The brindle mutant in the black rat snake shows sexual dimorphism, according to posts I've seen on kingsnake.com forums. The female is lighter than normal, and the male is lighter than the female. It needs more testing, but this is the most promising candidate for sexlinkage that I know of in snakes.

Thanks for the info.....I will be posting Scientific Data that can be accessed and validated via InterNet and UC Davis that supports Sex Linked Phenotypical Genes in Colubrids. This should Quite Nay sayers and put to rest creditability issues that I have created for myself on this and other Posts.......

Please Remember that my research is with Cal. Kings and Albinism..., but any Colubrid info of related topics will work...

It will probably be closer to the end of the month, but I am working on having a WebSite with links to related topics and accessable/creditable peer reviewed material, so that questions about genetics can be answered by the authorities in the subject. Hopefully UC Davis and other Noted Herpetological powerhouses will be sufficient to do this.

Thanks

Originally posted by Drunkenblade
It will probably be closer to the end of the month, but I am working on having a WebSite with links to related topics (snip)

Very good! Please post the URL when the web site is operational. I'd really like to see it.