World record Corn Snake Clutches?

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.

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

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

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.