World record Corn Snake Clutches?

ecreipeoj said:

Marcel, You will appriciate the next photos I post. I think I have figured out your main interest in corns and one of the parents is your favorite.

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Hhhhhmmmm, okay.. you got my attention... I am very curious now..

corn on the cob said:

today my 3 year old ghost corn layed her 30 th egg on her first time breed and all look good.

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By the way, this is an exceptional sized clutch for a three year old corn, especially for her first clutch. I have had a few that have laid 24 - 25 when they were three, but it wasn't their first clutches.

Marcel Poots said:

Hhhhhmmmm, okay.. you got my attention... I am very curious now..

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Well this old man is the father, but with a different female. I was concerned that the old man may not have it in him any more, but most of the clutch that is being laid at this very moment are fertile. There a a couple of plugs, but there are a good number of good eggs and a new mix of genes now exist!

Very nice.. Both of them actually.. But I have a weakness for old dark Bloodreds... That is a Bloodred right? Or else a very nice striped.

Lucky 13!!

Marcel Poots said:

Very nice.. Both of them actually.. But I have a weakness for old dark Bloodreds... That is a Bloodred right? Or else a very nice striped.

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Marcel,
Yes he is a Blood. He is very old and doesn’t have many years left. Many of the old style Bloods had stripes over the Blood pattern. He also has the old classic “dried” blood red color of the Bloods. He will throw everything that I wanted from a Blood into my Blood projects.

This Lava Okeetee laid 13 eggs and 5 plugs a little while ago. I will take it considering the father was this old style Blood. Hopefully, most of them will hatch and I will have a good group to work with toward a Lava Blood. The Lava Okeetee is from a wild line and is only homo for Lava. I am not sure about the Blood since I just acquired him this spring, but he is most likely just Homo Blood. I have bred him to an amel het snow so if he is het for one of them it will show up.

I got another clutch of eggs today from one of my Blood projects. The fertility was worse, but since they are project snakes, I only needed enough to work with. A female Snow poss het lava, bred to an Amel Blood male produced 8 fertile eggs and 11 plugs.

Since I just acquired the two blood males this spring I feel lucky to get anything at all. The other females which are bred to these two Bloods look fuller and I expect better fertility with them. Perhaps the male Bloods just needed to get their blood flowing or I just missed the best days for breeding.

Proud momma

I don't know if any of you noticed but this Lava Okeetee's opaque black areas have darkened up considerably. Her base color is the same, but her black is about twice as dark as it use to be. She is the only Lava that this has happened to. I have also found a few adults Lava Corns with Paradox black markings. Perhaps just one portion of a belly scale or a couple of scales in the black area, but completely black instead of the opaque purplish color.

I hatched out 8 Paradox Lava's in 2003. It will be interesting to see how the paradox develops in the future.

Close up, Lucky 13!!

I hope 13 will be my lucky number with these guys. Lava Bloods sound good.

I've had them lay as many as 37. I believe Kathy Love had one lay over 50, or knew of one that laid that many. Anyway the record is in the 50s.

best i have had is 38 all fertile from a large (4/5 to 5ft) snow female (although evey one who saw them said they were infertile i still incubated them) sadly she died form egg binding when she tried to lay a second clutch. I miss that snake she was very calm but managed to bite every one of my friends, i have fond memories.

Ice Poss amel X Het Amel Ice

This is another daughter to my best layer. She lays large elongated eggs so she cannot lay extremely high numbers of eggs, but she laid quite a few. There were 28 eggs laid and the pile was massive. They were all fertile too, which is nice to see. Way to go daddy!

These eggs are a result of an Ice poss amel X Het amel/anery/lava breeding. (Het Snow/Lava or Het Amel/Ice if you prefer) This female produced the very first Ice that ever existed. She has always double clutched and has very good weight, so I expect her to lay another 20 or so in a couple of months.

Reference for Size of eggs

I was offered a quarter for the clutch but turned it down.

String of pearls

This clutch was strung together like many are with a thin cord.

20 eggs, 8 plugs and 7 retained!

I have been expecting my best layer to lay any day and it had gone a couple of days passed when I thought she should lay. The night before, I noticed a huge swelling at mid length like she had eaten a rat. I felt the mass and it was full of about 12 eggs. I have never seen this before and suspected trouble.

I was relieved in the morning to see a pile of eggs in her lay box but it was obvious that she was not done laying. I checked her in about an hour and found that she had stopped laying, but had several eggs still in her. She was not contracting any more and the eggs that were left were not down by the vent, but near her middle. Great, just what I needed! Egg binding or females not passing all of their eggs is one of the things I hate about breeding corns. I get a few every year that do not pass all of their eggs.

There are a few options when this happens and I thought I had caught it in time to try Oxytocin. I took the eggs out that she had laid. She had laid 20 eggs and 8 plugs and gave her a good dose of Oxytocin and put her in a closed lay box. For those of you who are wondering, I gave her 20 mg. The recommended dose that I have seen for snakes of her size is 5 - 20 mg. I have only had success with Oxytocin in high doses so I gave her a full dose. She crawled around for about 20 minutes and settled down. I checked the box though the side and saw an egg! This was a very good sign. In about a half hour I check her again and she had laid 7 more fertile eggs and there were none left inside of her. Oxytocin doesn’t always work, but when it does it is a gift from the gods.

My best layer is getting pretty old. She is 15 years old now and has laid more eggs than any snake I have ever owned. She is looking pretty soft and flabby. Perhaps I should put her in a larger cage so she can crawl around more and take her out for a walk once in a while to strengthen up her muscles. She always double clutches and I think if I tried not to breed her she would produce plugs anyway. I think that if I tried to retire her, she is in such a routine that she would probably cycle in the spring anyway. I think I will give her some vitamins, put her in the bigger cage, and really see if a little exercise helps. I will feed her well and hope that she lives many more years.

An Oxytocin success!

27 eggs out of the old girl and 8 plugs. I think 35 is her maximum. Not a record, but my record.

Some of the eggs don't look quite right, but I will give them a chance.

I contacted Kathy Love a few days ago and told her about this thread. She said that she may respond in a few days when she gets her computer fixed.

From Bill and Kathy Loves book, “The Corn Snake Manual”, they report a single clutch laid of 53, a double clutch of 75 and a wild caught clutch of 45. These clutches seem to be records that would be very hard to beat.

Kathy told me that her largest clutch came this year and was 37.

Joe,

I believe the textbooks say Oxytocin only works in about 1 out of every 30 reptiles. Not very good odds, but still worth trying it. I'm glad it helped your girl!

You are right, it sure doesn't work all the time. I have had it work a few times and that is enough to try it. I have only had it work, if you give it to them soon after the problem starts and a pretty strong dose. It probably helped that I put her in a new lay box and she crawled around quite a bit, but the eggs were way up inside of her, and I really did not think I could palpate them out.

They rarely come out the way they are suppose to when I palpate them out. Usually the uterus gets torn, but most of them seem to recover from it fine and produce normally after the incident. Some of them retain their eggs the following year as well, and they are pretty well doomed eventually.

I have had them surgically removed way back when, but talk about violating them. They survived, but were never the same at least in my cases. There is just no great way to deal with this problem. I am sure that any and all suggestions would be welcome by all.

Is there another drug that works better in reptiles for this purpose? Oxytocin is made for mammals, but so is most of the other drugs I use on my snakes.

Both Don (at South Mountain Reptiles) and the doctor that helped me with my snake, recommend using Calcium injections. At this time, I do not remember the exact dose. I do know that Calcium is also a recommendation of Mader's, as well. I will see if I can look up the dosage in Mader's book tomorrow at work.