Help!

Okay, so I decided to down size my animals because I do alot of rescues and my husband wants me to go back to school for business management. I had over 50 animals and it was time that most find a new home any way. So, yesterday a guy contacted me wanting to do a trade for a few of my animals and brought over some crested geckos and a breeding pair of corn snakes. These guys are beautiful! I have never owned a corn snake before and quite honestly never really thought to. So, I decided to do the trade. Well, there's just one catch. The females is gravid. And when I say gravid I mean there is absolutely no denying it, you can both see and feel plainly gravid... In all my time I have never had anything Cross my door that is baby barring. Let alone looks like she's two seconds away from laying eggs. So, now, she's been handled, packed up, moved and stressed to the core of her very being. I have her housed in a custom enclosure built not for snakes, with her male counter point. This was a complete shock to me and I am very unprepared and in between pay days.the main reason I decided to take them was because it was a long car ride and I did not want for this to happen to her again being so late in her pregnancy. So. Now that everyone has the background, lets give you the details. Her current enclosure is a42L x 36h x 18 deep wooden enclosure. The ambient temperature in the room is kept at 77-82 at all times with basking spots available ranging from 85-90. The humidity level is set at 70. In the enclosure is both her and the male. I put in a five Gallon aquarium with 2" of a sand and peat moss mixture. I showed her that it was there and she immediately dug down into the mix and has het to come out. I figured when she lays her eggs I could simply pull out the aquarium and attempt to incubate them the old fashion way right in there. The less variable I have to mess this up the better chances these guys have to survive! So, am I doing this right? Will she lay the eggs under the substrate without my knowledge or will it be on top? Could she have already laid them? How will I know its time for her to lay? Should I take the male out? He doesn't bother her? Any advice on general care of corn snakes? Incubation times? Temps? Throw it all at me because i am ignorant and need to be educated quickly!

I would definitely remove the male. He will be adding extra stress for her.

Sand is generally not great for snakes because it gets under their scales, so I would make up a lay box for her with damp sphagnum moss or orchid moss. Just use a simple shoebox sized plastic container and make a big hole in it for her to get in and out easily. If you are planning on incubating the eggs, remove any large water dish she has and replace it with a small one. They sometimes will lay their eggs in their water dish.

Keep in mind, you do not HAVE to keep the eggs. If you're trying to downsize your number of animals, it might not be the best option for you to hatch out another 15-20 babies that need to be housed separately, heated, and fed. If you choose to not keep the clutch, just place it in the freezer for a little while and then throw it out.

I second separating the male and female - co-habbing is a difficult thing to get right and is definitely not something gravid corns should be subjected to when they're so susceptible both to stress and to physical ill-health (laying takes a lot out of female corns).

I would also agree that sand is not the best substrate for a lay box. Sphagnum moss, or just damp, scrunched up paper towel is much better. What are you using as a substrate in the main enclosure?

Finally, I agree that if you are trying to downsize, keeping the eggs is absolutely not a good idea. Baby corns take a lot of space, food and electricity, and can be hard to sell or even give away. If you want to keep them, that's fine, but realise that this does mean feeding and housing up to 20 new animals for possibly a protracted period of time. Sticking them in the freezer as soon as they're laid will prevent further embryonic development and you can safely dispose of them.

I will separate them as soon as my husband gets off of work and I can go to the store to get another set up for him. As far as the clutch goes, I would like to try my hand at it. I understand that first time success rate is low any way and I will be manually incubating as I do not have an incubator so my success rate is even lower. I have a separate reptile room in which I could easily put a rack for them for an extended amount of time and I am down to a ball python, three three toed box turtles, a fish tank, a bearded dragon, a pair of cresties, and the pair of corn snakes. I am fully prepared that the clutch may not make it but if even a couple of them do- that's something to take some pride in. I was told that the male is a Okeete Het Diffused Red and the Female is a Okeete Het Possible Albino/ Red stripe. So it may be an interesting clutch. And if Not I'll definitely learn a few things along the way. As for the lay box all I have available at the moment is peat moss and sheet moss. Will either of those be appropriate?

It's actually not difficult to incubate a corn snake clutch. I just do mine at room temperature, but it does take them longer to hatch. For room temp incubation, I would partially fill a plastic shoebox sized container (no air holes necessary, just lift the lid every now and then to refresh the air) with damp vermiculite or perlite. Either of those can be bought at Home Depot, Lowes, etc., pretty cheaply. Transfer the eggs once they're laid into the incubation box (making sure not to turn them), partially buried in the vermiculite, and then put a bit of the damp moss from the lay box over top of them. Then you just have to wait. Average incubation period is about 60-70 days, but they will usually go longer if you incubate at room temp. Mine this year went to 89 days.

If you can post some pictures of the parents, we can help you out with the morphs. I'm not sure what morph 'red' is supposed to be, because both diffused and amel (albino) are red colored morphs.

I'm thinking that peat moss should be okay, but I've never used it, so I'm not sure.

If you do end up wanting to keep the clutch, you have plenty of time to read through some of the topics and stickies in the breeding subforum. There's lots of info there!