Kinks, Deformities, and Conjoined Twins

Well I had a lot of bad luck this year!

Clutch #1: 10 eggs Mother snake got mouth rot from ingesting some substrate, recuperated well and double clutched.
1 kinked with deformed head normal (will be kept as a pet)
1 amel with very slight domed head
8 dead in egg and/or severely kinked babies all live ones put down.

Clutch #2: 5 eggs... Mother was very young but didn't double clutch and is growing VERY fast!
2 striped normals het for anery PERFECT in every way (one is a BITER!)
2 kinked striped normal dead in egg
1 normal striped dead in egg.

Clutch #3: 19 eggs.... mother snake was ill after laying and finally PTS after the last of her eggs was opened.
1 normal kinked/deformed head (will be kept as a pet)
1 Amel
2 normals
14 eggs yielded either dead in egg or badly kinked, deformed heads, missing deformed jaw babies.
1 egg yielded up a pair of conjoined twins. The twins were joined at the ventral surface, twisted around each other like the medical symbol, body cavity open at the join and the joint heart out in the open (and BEATING!)... tails separate, kinked loops so severe that the baby snakes were fused into complete "snake disks". ... the heads were joined at the throat..... each head had two bottom jaws... they were connected sideways so that the communal mouth had four sides... top and bottom were the heads of the snakes, and the two sides were the bottom jaws. VERY bizarre. Never would have been viable.

Clutch #6 is 4 eggs in a double clutch. Not due for a while. Three look like they could hatch. (no veins in one despite looking very fertile and viable.)

My two other clutches were kingsnake eggs....

Clutch #4: 12 eggs, two died in incubation, one was dead in egg, one baby was wrapped by the umbilical but saved... it's smaller than a corn hatchling.... took an hour to down a pinky head.

Clutch #5: 15 eggs... all died.

Been a bad year!

But I'm not giving up!

Just thought I would share. I haven't gotten any good pics of the babies... they're gettin ready to shed. Not as easy to take pictures of compared to taking pictures of black and white kingsnakes!

I'm curious about your incubation techniques, temperatures, and humidity. Can you share any data on the methods used?

Are all these clutches from different males, or has the same male sired several of these "problem" clutches?

Ouch! I would say that something is seriously wrong somewhere! No way you should have that much bad luck in one season. How about a run down on how you set up your eggs, incubating temps, etc.? Maybe we can spot something to help you out for next year.

Sorry to see this happen to you.

Sasheena,

I too am curious, but not just incubation procedures, temps, and genetics. It is possible there are other factors in the environment that caused these problems. Even if the same male sired all the corn snake eggs, it is possible it could be environmental especially in light of the fact that the kingsnake eggs were also effected. If different males sired the corn snake eggs, then it is very likely that some environmental factor or factors are causing these deformities and dead eggs. I am wondering if incubation temps at some critical stages of the incubation process caused these abnormalities or if something else of an environmental nature fouled things up.

Is it possible that all of these eggs were exposed to some sort of chemical toxin (this could be while developing in the females such as from tainted food that both the corns and kings were fed) or could be during incubation (such as from tainted incubator medium or a tainted incubator itself). Things that could taint the medium or the incubator might include cleaning agents used to clean the incubator or the snake enclosures (even trace elements of some chemicals can be toxic), toxins on rodents fed to the female snakes while they were gravid (such toxins might include phenols from cleaners used in rodent cages and where traces were taken into the rodent fur or the toxic substances in cedar shavings), insecticides used in the snake room, cleaning agents used in the snake room, deodorizers used in the snake room and so on.

Hopefully you will discover the cause, and be able to eliminate it.

Best of luck,
Glenn B

This was my first year with Cornsnakes. I incubated the kingsnakes and cornsnakes exactly the same. Temperatures ranged from 79 to 84 in general... with one extreme temp spike to 88 degrees for a 12 hour period when the AC failed. This was in the first 20 days of incubation. The eggs were on vermiculite, in general the vermiculite was damp enough to clump when squeezed, but not so damp that it would drip water when squeezed. EXCEPT one of the clutches did have too damp a substrate, which I corrected shortly after the heat spike. I incubated them in sealed "gladware" containers with no airholes, but checked them every couple of weeks. I began incubation with tapwater and later changed all the eggs to new vermiculite with bottled water instead. I had one kingsnake still gravid when the AC went down, she subsequently laid 15 eggs that all died. Two of the kingsnake eggs died, one was "dead in egg" at hatching, the rest of hte kingsnakes were all fine... no kinks or deformities in the clutch.

The cornsnakes were all fathered by an '02 striped cornsnake male.

The first clutch was laid by an '02 "Normal het motley" who seems to really be a "hypo het amel". She was well within the prescribed size. She laid 10 eggs, and all ten eggs went full term. Four of the eggs had mold problems, two of which were black with mold at time of hatching. This clutch (the too damp one) was very ugly at the time of hatching. I had some doubts. Only two of the hatchlings actually pipped their own eggs, and those are the two I still have. The rest had varying degrees of deformed jaws/heads/kinked spines.

The second clutch was laid by an '02 Striped Anery. She was really a bit too small to breed and I worried about her becoming eggbound. She laid 6 eggs and 6 slugs. ONe egg died. The remaining five eggs went full term. Two perfect striped normals het anery hatched out. The other three were dead in the egg, two kinked with deformed jaws and heads, one perfect, but dead.

The third clutch was laid by an '01 or '00 Reverse Okeetee. I believe she was sold as a proven breeder to a friend of mine, who then gave her to me. She laid 21 good eggs. One died early in incubation (ruptured) and one died later in incubation (ruptured). One ruptured but was "band-aided" and crawled out of the manually pipped egg.... looked perfect and died within hours of leaving her egg. These eggs were kept drier than the rest. Of the 19 eggs that went full term, 2 pipped. After 48 hours I pipped the rest. 1 appeared to be a snow (but not sure, it was dead). The two that pipped on their own were perfect in every respect. Another amel and normal made it out of their pre-pipped eggs alive. The rest were either dead in their eggs, or pathetically needing euthanization. Including the conjoined pair of twins.

My thoughts on the source of my troubles....

* it could be the male. (genetic)
* it could be the tap-water
* it is probably the heat spike

Now.... if it is genetic, there are two basic possibilities. (yes, more than that, but I'm talking simple genetics)... it could be a dominant or a recessive gene. If it is dominant, the male snake looks good for having a dominant deformity gene. He has no kinks, his jaw is the perfect shape, and his head is also the perfect shape. BUT even if he doesn't express the gene and passes it on to be expressed in 50% of his offspring, then I should have had better than 2/10, 2/5 and 4/19 viable offspring out of the three clutches. If it is recessive, since I had the same basic expression with all three sets of eggs, then that would assume that all three females are coincidentally recessive for the same deformity.... which seems unlikely... the Flourescent Corn was bred by Rich at Serpenco, or is the offspring of snakes bred by him. The striper was bred by a local breeder here in AZ. And the Hypo het Amel (sold as normal het motley) was bred by a friend of Kathy Love's. IF it was recessive I should have had even more "successfully healthy" babies.

The water here is foul, with the water company openly claiming it has more fecal matter in it than is currently acceptable, but that "some things can't be removed from the water." So that could be a factor... but the kingsnake eggs weren't effected.

The heat spike is absolutely the most likely cause of this tragic breeding season. All three corns laid their eggs within a 5 day period. the eggs themselves were in a similar state of development. The kingsnake eggs were also laid at the same time, but in their case, my thought is that they were protected by their larger size... different point in incubation, or some other factor (AZ natives can take the AZ heat better than FL snakes?)

Next year I plan the following as a followup to the possible defective male theory.

I'm going to breed Hermes to one female only. I'll breed my Snow Motley to two of the females that bred this year (the reverse okeetee never recovered from laying the eggs and had to be put down). I will use only bottled water. I may try a no-substrate method. If I find some good sphagnum moss that doesn't mold within days of getting moist, I'll try that. I probably won't use an incubator, no real need here in AZ.

I've attached a picture of the conjoined twins.

some more pictures of the twins...

Regarding the food the snakes ate... I raise my own feeders, feed them practically the same thing as my snakes last year (I had a 100% hatch rate with two king clutches last year). They get PetsMart Cheap dogfood, Corn, Oats, Barley, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, and occasionaly other supplementary materials. They are all thumped and fed warm to the snakes. Aside from perhaps a too-high fat content in the mice, and a concentration of rats lately, the snakes have a very good diet of very good mice. Nothing has changed in my routine.

Of course there WAS an incident out at the power plant... the reporters all said it was "mild," and "no big deal".... but you never know! This WAS while the snakes were in early gestation. Of course the power plant is five or six miles away so perhaps that is a weak theory.

One last picture of the conjoined twins

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. I've had clutches give me the same results (severe deformities, kinks, dead in shell, and those that looked normal all refused to eat...ever). In Florida, I have the same problem with temp spikes, so attribute these problems to that, but since I have multiple clutches laid throughout a few months, not all get affected by a temp spike. I've also wondered about problems with specific males. I have 2 males that either fail to fertilize most of the eggs, even after 3-4 "successful" matings, or most of the fertilized eggs go bad within the first month of incubation. Both males have been bred to several, unrelated females each year for the past 2 years.

The age of your snakes may also need to be considered. Even though they are of the proper size/weight, '02 hatchlings may not have been fully mature, sexually, to reproduce successfully. If you consider that most '02 hatchlings were probably born somewhere between May and August, they were put into brumation at roughly 1 1/2 years of age and bred before they were 2 yrs old. I've done this in the past myself, with poor results, and lost several females that couldn't recover from egg-laying. And most of those that did recover, weren't recovered fully enough to breed the next year. I won't breed "2 yr olds" again, no matter their size.

Definately use bottled water in the future. I've had no problems with my well water, yet, but it is definately something for you to consider since you know your water isn't the best, and I get my water tested regularly, just to make sure.

And you could also try a different incubation medium next year. I use sphagnum moss, but you do need to watch the quality. Last year, the quality I had wasn't the best and I had alot of problems. This year, the quality was super (same brand as last year, surprisingly) and I've had alot fewer problems. I'm sure that the quality can vary from year to year since we're talking about something that was once alive and growing conditions can vary from year to year. I won't use vermiculite anymore (did when I raised chameleons) because I had alot of trouble keeping it at the right moisture level. The moss works much better for me.

Hopefully you'll have better luck next year and Mr. Murphy will leave you alone!

Several years ago I had my snakes in an industrial/retail strip center. There was a chinese reataurant and a place that imported clothes and junk from the orient. We had a LOT of cochroaches after the clothes and junk importer moved in.

I had bred my snakes there for several years. One year I had a bunch, over a hundred, of eggs laid infertile. Of the other two hundred or so that were laid good almost all of them failed to hatch. Multiple males, multiple species. I was also figuring it was temp spikes as we had temps in the 110s, even though I had an airconditioner in the room it was all I could think of to account for so many eggs being bad when I had never had those numbers laid bad or fail to hatch before.

Then one day I was down there about 6 am. There was a pest control guy spraying around the exterior of the entire building, including the doorways of everyones shops. I asked him how long he had been coming around as I had NEVER seen anyone do this prior to me seeing him. He told me it had been about six months, shortly after the importer of clothes and junk and cochroaches had moved in. Coincidentally just before breeding season.

You may want to see if there is any pesticide spraying happening in your complex or if they have changed companies or chemicals they are using. It sure screwed up my breeding that year.

I moved out the following year, downsized and have not had that problem since.