Do you find it happens with both clutches or more the second clutch? I usually find my second clutch babies to be more reluctant to eat and are slightly smaller than their first clutch siblings.
Another good question.
However, I am not an experienced breeder, just a cornsnake lover who happened to have 3 adult corns, one of whom laid eggs the last couple of years. It wasn't until I had some time to research how to care for eggs last year that I began to get more involved, incubating a small clutch of 12, 3 of which hatched. Unfortunately, there was only 1 survivor, a healthy, unsexed yearling (will be exactly a year on 7/30) who just tipped the scale at 135 grams. He eats large hoppers and is ready to graduate to small mice soon!).
My female snake Lilly (don't know if you've followed any of my other relatively WORDY posts here) has just laid her second clutch of 9 eggs on 7/2, the first of 19 eggs laid on 5/21. So I'm still waiting for the first one to hatch. I do hope you're wrong about the size because the eggs in the second clutch were HUGE compared to her first. Maybe had to do with the fact that the first was laid without her laybox and under a hide. I had removed it because she had developed a clicking sound and a puffy throat which I thought was a respiratory infection but turned out to be because she was trying to blow out the powdery residue of the coconut bark substrate from her little nostrils which were impacted in there due to excessive burrowing. The vet I spoke with recommended I take 2 valium and call her back the next day!! LOL!
(If you haven't seen any of my posts, then you don't know I am more anxious than a reggae band at a Ku Klux Klan rally!!!)
But seriously, for health issues, it might be worth your while to purchase a used copy of Rossi's "What's Wrong With My Snake?" Not limited to corns but probably saved me a fortune on vets!
So, I HOPE you're wrong because I REALLY don't wanna go through that again, but I love my pets, therefore, no matter what, I'll do what I gotta do! I have a pretty good history of having pets with a LOOONG life, as I have had a boa live a little past 15 years, 2 cats live to be about 18 (one died just before turning 18 and her sibling passed 4 months after at a little over 18), and I've had many, MANY reptiles which lived past their expected ages (mostly lizards but I have two tortoises at my mom's who have lived in her backyard - YES, in Brooklyn! - since the 1970's and are still going strong! Actually, I don't consider them to be my pets anymore because I moved out twenty-something years ago! But I initiated their care and taught those whom I left them with what to do and how to care for Bonnie & Clyde!! My sister and brother-in-law care for them now as they live next door to my mom. And my adult corns are 8 years-old this year. I nursed and assist-fed and finally even force fed the two hatchlings who didn't make it up to almost three months last year! Neither of them ever ate, though one did strike, grab, and then released a pinky once! Poor babies! Probably Mother Nature's way of culling out the weakest of the species (she can be a remorseless B***H!!!). (Torch & Noodles - RIP!). Bottom line is that I will do what I have to do to ensure the highest quality of life and for as long as ethically possible for all my pets.
It's not just a hobby. They are my family - not to mention, better than MOST people! Wish everyone treated them as such. There would be no intentional cruelty in the world. (I say intentional because even I am human - my point about MOST people and I have to include MYSELF in that statement! - and I was cohabbing my 3 adults up to this past April when members on this site suggested it wasn't good and though my snakes were obviously healthy and appeared happy, I did the research and the information I discovered compelled me to rethink everything I knew and had been "taught" about corns! So I had to do the right thing and separate them immediately, lest I be like everyone else and a part of the problem as opposed to the solution, as most people would just perpetuate the status quo whether it has to do with corn snakes or life in the community or even politics in our world)!
Well there I go again!! Tangential thinking and perseveration of the issues which is common for those of us who are bipolar dopefiends with PTSD & OCD (did I mention I tried OCD Anonymous but 144 steps was too much! They kept repeating every step 12 times!!!). :eek1:
BTW, Happy Independence Day gekosin!!! :fullauto: :dancer: :madeuce: :uzi: :bomb::blowhead:
