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Need Help w/ pregnant ETB

R

rryan58

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Last night I was greeted by the arrival of 5 fully formed stillborn baby ETBs.
This isn't the first time so I've ruled out coincidence. What am I doing wrong?
for the month of Sept: Day time temp 81-84. humidity 80%
Nite time temp 76 humidity 66%
I use a humidifier for the whole room. there wasn't any pre / post shed.
I had the same issue last year with a different female. different cage, same room. The stillborn birth was in August 3 stillborn / 3 slugs.
I'm not sure, but I believe this is the first pregnancies for both. Both females are in excess of 4 feet and had excellent weight. They are w/c. I've had them both in excess of 4 yrs. Any advice would be appreciated!
 
shoot, sorry I missed this !!! now this is just the way I do it and there might be others with different ways..
so your humidity seems to be perfect.. I will start by saying, these snakes need a full year off after giving birth, that means you should only breed every 2 years.. that said :)

when you start the breeding season you can spray a little more often to stimulate a wet season and drop temps a little . I drop the temps a few months before by a couple degrees every week..
ok I was going to go with a full breeding procedure but you seem to have that part working :)

you should raise the temps at the hot spot once you know they are pregnant.. get a hot spot of 90 deg.. most females will stretch out their bodies under the heat source while keeping their heads lower in the cage..
by having a good gradient in the temps, they will know where to be.. I've noticed that my females would always stay on the hot side trying to get heat to have the babies develop ..
as I mentioned, others may have other explanations, but I think that keeping the 84 is too low, a gravid female need more heat to incubate her babies..

hope this makes sense !!

best of luck.. and if it works next time m let me know and I can give you pointers with the babies, they are some of the most complicated babies to care for..

Cheers

Steph
 
Thanks for replying. I really appreciate it!
I know about the 2 yr breeding cycle... no worries there.
Those temps I quoted were for the small room the ETBs were kept in. I think the individual enclosures would be a bit higher as there were low wattage ceramic heaters on. Cages were big enough so the females could regulate the temps.
I did observe the pregnant female basking under a 24 hr ceramic heater. She would move under it when she wanted and then moved away. I did not notice much basking in the last month.
I have a question: I live on Long Island, NY. During the summer, we had 2 separate heat waves lasting around 4 days each. The temps in the snake room reached 97 degrees. I didn't notice any distress, but do you think this could be a cause for the still births?
I have a small fan that I use to circulate the air but it isn't on a regular basis. I think I need yet another timer.

BTW, those are some very pretty babies you have there. I'm jealous.

Rich
 
Hey Rich,

from what you described, sounds like everything is good..
as for the heat waves !!! it could be possible, they can take a little heat but not for extended periods of times.. so, is 4 days too long ?? if at night temps went back down and you are misting , which helps bring the temps down.. could be no problem .. then again, it could have triggered an early birth.. but this could be caused from different reasons too, too hot, not hot enough, stress..
I Have central air and my snake room is on the basement level ,so summer time tends to stay cool in the house and I add a small heat radiator in the room and humidifier for the winter just to keep the room at 78.. it doesn't need to work too hard with all the cages in there, but does help .

but another thing you could do is to add extra support for the female, more vines or perches to help support her weight ,if you haven't already.. that with a good 90 deg hot spot should help get her to term with fully developed little red babies :)

also, after I have noticed locks I make sure not to skip meals and let them feed more as they get bigger until they go off feed..this might also help assure they have the energy reserves to make it to the end..

going to start matching up 3 females this weekend.. hope the males are looking for dates :-D
 
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