2005 Season Results

Sometimes waiting for eggs to hatch is the HARDEST thing! It would be easier if I was working, but I"m always on vacation for most of the waiting!

I'm anticipating a real population explosion coming very soon, so I thought I would start this thread, and put all my updates here.

The reason I started it is that my clutch of 4 eggs from Tigris has one egg that is starting to dimple, which I've seen happen in eggs getting close to hatch.

Today here are my clutches:

Tigris: 4 eggs, day 55

Licorice: 14 eggs, day 49

Pegasus: 7 eggs, day 49

Euphrates: 7 eggs, day 45

Queenie: 11 eggs, day 44

Tigris' four eggs will be just the start... They'll just start to shed when I'll start to have a BLITZ of egg hatchings! I hope they all hatch before I go back to work on the 5th!

And for fun, here's a picture from my first year breeeding snakes...

best of luck with all the eggs and soon to be hatchlings.

I can't wait for my first clutch to hatch. It could be any day now, but chances are, it will happen when I am out of town for a short vacation. Wow, I'll be worried the entire time I am gone. I know I can't take them with me, and my mom is terrified of snakes - as it is, she does not like my mice (and 1 rat) but she will be taking care of them for me while I am away. It ALMOST makes me wish I could just stay home with them all! lol

I've had a lot of "Vacation" things get in the way of my breeding snakes this year! I had 2 snakes ready to lay when hubby and I went on a three day vacation... that's why Licorice and Pegasus are both at day 49... I put the date of the laying of the eggs at one day before we returned, but for all I know one clutch was laid moments after we left, and the other moments before we returned! ... Then later I had a clutch hatching when the family had a Grand Canyon vacation planned. Sadly I came home and found that whole clutch unhatched save one... and found that all but the one were dead in the egg. *sigh* .... I have one more vacation planned ... and wouldn't you know it... another clutch will be due then. Those are corn snake clutches though

I can't wait to see all the pics of your babies.

Bizarre Update...

It's day 60 for my first king clutch. One egg is still somewhat collapsed, one has a pea-sized spot that is sort of slimey (barely) so I don't know if that one is dead.... no pipping yet

And I go to clean cages/feed snakes and I say ... "What are all those white lumps...?"

Euphrates, one of my first year breeders, who laid 7 enormous eggs 50 days ago, has 7 eggs and a slug. The eggs are half the size of her first clutch eggs. They look like they've been laid in the last 12 hours! egads! When did she get gravid? She was NEVER reintroduced to my males. I was too busy to even ATTEMPT any rebreeding this year. This is my second surprise clutch, and I'm only half way done with feeding snakes!

In any case, that makes an even 50 kingsnake eggs.... so far!

The new eggs look good. Plump and full. The slug was hardened on one side but still wet and slick on the other side, which tells me she really laid the eggs in the last 6 hours.

I guess my snakes are dictating to me when they are done producing eggs and not the other way around.

What a nice surprise! I sure hope those eggs start pipping soon I may have to get a couple. I know I know you warned me that they are addictive, but I'm hard headed lol. I love the high whites and yes the wifey says I can have some

Joe

Yes, it's a GREAT surprise, but nice that they weren't like my other surprise clutch, a cornsnake clutch, that I found half deflated-- they'd been laid a day or more before I found them and were sucked dry.... actually of those seven, 4 look REALLY good, and 1 looks IFFY and the other two died, so it's not that bad... if I can hatch some that's certainly better than losing the entire clutch.

I looked over some of my king eggs last night and snapped a few photos. I looked at Euphrates other eggs and the one HUMONGOUS egg that I was wondering if it contained a set of twins appears to have died. I'm not sure, so I'm still incubating it, but when I opened the egg box it looked SUPER sweaty... Now humidity is up here in AZ (they call it the Monsoon), so all my egg boxes are getting a lot more condensation, but if only ONE out of seven eggs is totally wet, that's a bad sign of a dead egg. Of course I figured I had two choices... I could open it up now and discover what's going on inside.... But I could be wrong and at day 51, it's too soon... I could kill any living babies. OR I could leave it be and see what happens. If the egg is dead waiting a while won't make it deader. When the rest of the eggs hatch I'll be able to open it up then and see if I can figure out why it died.

BUT with 7 unexpected eggs from my beautiful girl, I don't feel terribly upset to have maybe lost one egg.

Here's a picture of the new clutch:



Here's a picture of the clutch that is on day 61 and gettin ready to hatch!

Pipping Babies!!!

This morning I checked on my eggs, and saw this lovely sight:



Only four eggs, but it's really neat to see the babies hatching! Day 62, just like last year!

Yesterday I finally decided that one of my eggs in another clutch that had started to sweat profusely had gone bad. {squeamish folks need not continue}... Here is the egg:



I decided to open it up.... the first slit was small to see if "healthy egg fluit" would surge out.... I don't know how I would describe healthy egg fluid, but it's thicker than water and gel-like but like a very thin gel.... clear, smells like bell peppers. When I got stuff the consistency of water and it was pinkish orange, that told me that the egg was no good, so I proceeded to open it up. This was my first view:



Now this egg was opened 11 days prior to its due date. My thought is that it should have a nearly full term baby in the egg, small, with some developmentally retarded points that attest to it not being fully developed and ready to hatch. (But I do NOT know the growth rate of babies, and when they get color, when anything happens in general, so I could be completely wrong here.) I didn't think that I was seeing an embryo that was 51 days into incubation. To my thought I was seeing a baby that was maybe 30 days, or possibly 40, but certainly not 50. Again, this is NOT a scientific observation based on known development rates of eggs.

I opened the egg up some more and this is what came out. Note a hard-boiled mass on one of the long ends of the egg mass, stuck to the shell. I didn't note (and have since tossed) whether the hard boiled stuff was at the same location as the dark spot on the egg itself before cutting it open.



And finally I pulled the actual baby out from the egg-mass... this is what I saw:



Sadly this morning at least three more eggs in that clutch have started to sweat profusely. Perhaps I shall lose the entire clutch. They are from the same female who laid the second clutch of 7 eggs.

Great pictures there. Sad to lose the baby, though.

Update...

My pipping babies are doing great, all poking their heads out.... 3 eggs doing great. One egg started to sweat however, so I decided to open it up. What I saw inside looked "peculiar" and after tossing around options I decided to investigate. The baby had perished perhaps 5 to 15 days ago, is my guess. It was very peculiar in shape... it's little mouth was open or it didn't have a lower jaw. (I didn't note which it was) and it was in a very tight loop... perhaps it's a developmental stage of snakes, not sure, but in any case, I thought it was interesting to look at. I'll post pictures if they turned out.

My "sweating clutch" (which I've been informed over on kingsnake.com is due to my being "dumb" and keeping my clutch too moist?) is looking pretty bad. Two eggs aren't sweating, but the rest look doomed. I opened up one more egg and while I didn't take pictures, I found the same thing. I was told over on kingsnake that the pictures of my last egg I opened had red blood vessels which indicated that the animal was alive when I killed it by opening up the egg, however I do not quite agree. It had perished. And the one I opened up this evening while having one single blood vessel had no other signs of vessels and appeared to have been dead some time, even though the innards of the egg were actually much closer to looking like a viable egg than an expired egg. I'll wait until tomorrow to open the others if I feel they need it.

The rest of my eggs are doing great. I'm very much looking forward to my three hatchlings and the impending clutches that WILL make it.