• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Corn Snake Eggs Hatching HELP!!!!

B

BarryK

New member
Hi

We're on our 2nd clutch now (we have two females and the one has already had a clutch).

The first baby hatched out on Sat 1st May - this was 69 days since they were laid (we've kept them just below 30C as everything we've read says its better to keep them slightly cooler than that). Since then out of the 8 remaining eggs 1 more has hatched out.

I'm concerned about the lack of progress with the others, especially as we had one who slit his egg late Monday night but has not emerged. I'm pretty sure this one has died now and I don't want to loose the remaining eggs.

Is it normal for babies to take this long to hatch out? I've checked the shells and they all seem fairly soft.

What do people suggest I do and when?

B.
 
I think there are two schools of thought - leave them or slit the eggs and assist them.

I'm in the "leave them" school. If they're too weak or sickly to hatch on their own, then they shouldn't be in the gene pool.

Having said that - are your eggs in a clump? The eggs nearest the heat source will have been slightly warmer and will hatch first. Those furthest away will take longer to complete incubation. It's normal for my clutches to hatch over 2-3 days, but I've had them take over a week from first to last egg.
 
Yeah - we were going to do the "leave it" strategy - it was just with the 1st clutch 3 eggs made it full term and only 2 hatched, but when we checked on the 3rd the baby was fully formed but couldn't get out so it was a little upsetting.

"Having said that - are your eggs in a clump? The eggs nearest the heat source will have been slightly warmer and will hatch first"

Well, they are a little bit of a pain; she laid 11 eggs in total. 9 were together in one big clump and two were paired off (these two have since stopped adhering to one another but still seem fine - my mother noticed the smaller of the two moving last night). The "main" clump has been consistently nearer the heat source, although I would imagine the temperature difference would be minimal.

Of the 9 in the main clump, 2 have gone bad (they were infertile), 2 have hatched, we've had the 1 which I'm convinced is dead and another egg which looks like it could have gone bad; so we have 3 in the main clump left and the two off by themselves.

I'm not sure if this is particularly relevent, but out of these remaining 5, 3 are MASSIVE eggs...

I did get advice from one person that, if I slit the eggs, I should do it on about the 75th day after hatching...

Thank you for that little anecdote though - I might just leave them; I suppose as long as they've not pipped, still look full and healthy and the shells are soft, there's no particular need to slit them.

But yes, I don't know if anything I've told you changes your advice.

Does anyone else have something to input? All opinions and advice would be very much appreciated.
 
Well, now if one was moving the other night that is a good sign! Please do keep us posted. As to the one who stayed in his egg, he may be taking his time a bit. Sometimes their yolk isn't fully absorbed when they pip and they chill to let it finish as well as rest from the exertion of breaking out. As to slitting at day 75, I said that was what I would do, not necessarily said you should do it then. Its really up to you.
 
Oh right - sorry for the misquote carnivorouszoo

Yeah, the one who has stayed in the egg, his/her sibling stayed with their head poking out for nearly two days, and all the others have played a little game of peekaboo with us, but I was always under the impression that they should stick their heads out as soon as the slit is big enough - this one has made three pips (one big, the others small) and has just stayed completely inside his/her egg - through the larger pip we can see one coil of its body but there's been absolutely no movement from it that we can see
 
I'm so sorry :( Is there anyway you can remove him before it begins to cause issues for the others? I'm not sure it would but just to be safe. . .
 
We've already had to remove two bad eggs which were attached to the main clump - they were covering the surface of a couple of the good eggs - and were beginning to turn a strange colour and smell VERY bad.

It isn't really blocking any of the other eggs and I'm not sure it will cause problems but it is a dead body and well...the inevitable would begin to happen, so we'll probably remove it later tonight.

If I'm honest, even if none of the others hatch we'll still see this as an overall triumph as I never thought I would actually fulfil my dream of breedin corns and now, after 14 years, its happened so...

But yes - I will keep you all updated; we'll keep our fingers crossed for the remaining 5 :)

Thanks for the advice and the kind comments
 
Just thought I'd update - we've removed the two "dodgy" eggs and the babies inside were both dead - there was alot of the yoke left, which we're guessing means they died early on in their development :(

Its sad, but we're taking the view that its nature taking its course and its actually given us some useful information - their father was an Amel het anery and we THOUGHT that their mother was a pure "normal" but these two babies are Anerys...
 
See my reply on the "NAME THAT MORPH" thread. Pre-term embryos can often appear Anery when they aren't, so that isn't a safe assumption.
 
I just thought I'd keep people updated - as of yesterday we've got another baby. I was a little concerned because there was an awful lot of gunk in the egg with him/her, but then again, the egg was massive (easily half-again the size of the others).

Here's hoping the last 4 hatch out soon.

Also, the female who laid this clutch has laid another one - 7 eggs. She's doin fine and is about to have her post-lay shed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top