Clutch #2 of the season...

15 eggs in total. 3 are kingsnake food (slugs) and maybe two more will be soon... it's hard to tell right now but they're noticably smaller than the rest of her eggs, although they're pretty much the same size as the good eggs from my other female.

(This snow lays big eggs that all candle yellowish colors with no blood vessels... then about a week later you can see the veins all over the place.)

Oh well, if they start rotting I'll know they're bad, and if they candle veins as soon as the rest do, I'll know they're good.

Do corns eat eggs too? Or just kings? I've never seen a picture of any snake eating eggs...looks kind of weird.
Congrats on the clutch!

I've heard people talk about feeding quail eggs to snakes...I've thought about it from time to time, just for variety's sake. Though I seriously doubt my snakes are particularly finicky about getting a varied diet...anything that resembles a rodent will do. Including fingers, if they are in feeding-response mode.

That is a cool picture, even if it is sad that the eggs were bad. I hope all the rest are ok and you get lots of cute little babies soon!

Serp

I know that the picture you posted is of a cali king and that they are glutonous feeders (at least mine are) but it just reminded me of a story I was told recently by a fellow herper.

He had a couple of hognose eggs which didn't hatch and then several of the hatchlings were deformed for whatever reason so he froze them and started feeding them to his kingsnake (I forget the sp).
This went on for several weeks until his supply was used up.

So far so good

The problem arose when he tried to get his kingsnake to accept rodents again - it just didn't want to know

I believe that the only way this snake will accept mice now is if they are scented with either lizard or snake. OOOOPPS

Sorry it's not really cornsnake related but I thought you might find it of interest.

Andy

Very nice cal king!
I never got into kings, do they need around the same care as corns? Cause if so, I might want to get into kings soon. Since there aren't much corn snakes morphs here in Canada that interests me much....hahah

Good luck and Happy Herping!

He doesn't eat that often anyway... I had to slow him down since he stopped growing a couple years ago and got fat from eating too often. He only ate about 6 meals last year, and is still a bit too large.

That pic is from last year, when I fed him a second clutch that consisted of 7 slugs. The funny part is that he ATTACKS them in his typical fashion, as if they are going to run away, hehe.

Yeah, he has become a bit more picky since then, but I just try the rats with him first. If he doesn't eat I just give them to one of my adult corns. Even with the skipped meals, he eats plenty. ;-)

Originally posted by Simon
Very nice cal king!
I never got into kings, do they need around the same care as corns?

Yeah, very similar care. If you can care for corns, you can care for kings.

BTW thanks, it took two years of looking at CalKings before I finally picked him out. I guess a lot of them turn from black/white to brown/yellow as adults, but he's stayed mostly like his baby colors.

One note on kings: they are snake-eaters. You must be far more careful if you plan on keeping more than one in a tank...I don't think I'd do it at all. Nature always takes over.

Any experienced breeders feel free to correct me...this is just my understanding of kings in the wild.