• 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

E

electricbee

New member
So my corn snake layed eggs on June 10th. She's a 24 year old snake and she layed the eggs through parthyogenisis and they still haven't hatched. They were definetly alive, not so sure if they still are. Should I cut them open? I don't think they've started to rot yet but once again not sure. I haven't raised snake eggs before and am not sure what I should do at this point. Any help would be very much apreciated. :awcrap:
 
First of all - wow 24 years old? She must be a grand old lady indeed!

Secondly, successful parthenogenesis, where eggs laid be an unmated female actually hatch into living offspring, has never been documented in corns. It has been recorded in other snake species (although the health of the offspring is dubious), but never corns, and considering the vast number of corns kept over the years, it's pretty certain that if it could happen, it would have done in captivity by now.

That having been said, some say it's possible for corns to store sperm from matings in previous seasons. Has she ever been with a male, in your care? If so, when? If not, when did you get her?

If you've had her since she was a baby though, and she's never been with a male, the eggs will be slugs.
 
She's never been with a male but the eggs were definetly fertile at some point. I have been candling them and they had veins and only recently the veins have disappeared which I believe is because they're getting ready to hatch. I'm just not sure at what point I sure cut them to see if there's anything there.
 
electricbee said:
She's never been with a male but the eggs were definetly fertile at some point. I have been candling them and they had veins and only recently the veins have disappeared which I believe is because they're getting ready to hatch. I'm just not sure at what point I sure cut them to see if there's anything there.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't cut into them just yet. If you do and they're not ready, you'll certainly kill any developing snake inside and they MIGHT even feel it! If you incubated them at a relatively cooler temperature, they just take a little longer than usual. Sometimes, incubation can exceed 80 days, unless I read that wrong.

However, are you 100% certain your snake has never been paired? As Giga mentioned, parthenogenesis in corns is highly unlikely. Sorta like trying to book a reggae band at a ku klux klan rally!

Just sayin'. :crazy01:
 
A picture of the eggs would really help.
Did you use an incubator?
Are there "windows" ? (clear spot of the shell)
86 days is a long time but not unheard of. At the recommendation of a very experienced herpetologist I cut a corn snake egg open around the same length of time just to find a live baby that needed a few more weeks to fully develop. All I could do at that point is watch its beating heart stop after a few minutes. Very sad experience for sure..
So yeah don't cut just yet !!

And WELCOME :)
 
She definitely hasn't been. I've had her since she was a baby and she's been in a terrarium by herself the whole time. She's the only snake I've ever had too.
 
And I don't have an incubator but I've kept the eggs in a plastic container with moist ecoearth and covered it loosely.
There are "windows" in the eggs and they've started dimpling which a local reptile store owner told me meant they were close to hatching. There's only two eggs, the rest of them were infertile.
 
Here are photos. I know they are discolored I think that was from the dirt because they have been like that since I put them in the dirt. One photo shows the "windows" a little better and the other is less blurry.

AF1QipPXVruYUqi3zDfVxuHN5vh9BjA9F8TMXkpN5FNs


AF1QipP9H5A-tHSX5V7FTr9PI-HUMZ0OItkNkc-2Wk7Z
 
Sadly, none of your links worked. I think you have to be logged into your google account to see them.

You can upload your pics to your album here.
 
These last pictures worked fine. Thanks. I know it can be a little daunting posting pictures here at first.
 
2 dimensional pics can sometimes mislead me but I'm sorry to say that they don't look good. IMO the eggs are to caved in. The color is off and the "windows" aren't good looking "windows". I had a beauty snake lay what looked like perfectly good fertile eggs a few years ago even though the snake that laid them was never mated. I still incubated them. They stayed nice and white until around 80-90 days when I finally could feel that they were cooked and hard........
Since I'm not there to see and feel them to know for sure there is no harm in letting them go a another week or so :)
 
Not for nothing electricbee, those eggs are so ugly, Ripley wouldn't even believe it! If anything comes OUTTA them, they just might be allowed out on Halloween!

But seriously, just in CASE there IS something alive in them (as daddio points out, the inability to examine them F2F is a serious deficit here), maybe you should just let them be for another week or so. You might be pleasantly surprised - or not.

Just sayin'. :eek1:

How ya been? :p
 
Never any harm in letting the eggs sit, is there?

I will personally eat my hat if anything alive comes out of them though; parthenogensis is not a thing in corns.
 
Cut open the egg that we thought was least likely to have a live snake in it, and there's a snake in it! Not sure whether or not it's alive though. How do I know if it's alive or not? I can see the umbilical cord and the fluid looks clear. We haven't cut open the second one yet. Any advice?
 
Saw that but the eggs have been showing signs of rotting. Pretty sure it was dead before I cut it open because there wasn't any blood in it and there's a creamy layer on the inside of the shell.
 
Pretty disappointing end to a long journey of waiting and excitement :( I was hoping I might have a baby snake come out of this but I guess not. There's still the other egg but it's probably the same...
 
Took snake out of egg and there was no way it was viable. It was very deformed and starting to rot. It had some pattern but it has a lump on its head and its sides grew together so we can't even uncoil it. It was stuck to the shell and we think that was causing it to be unable to move.

Cut open second egg and so far it's much less developed and even more deformed. It didn't even have any pattern.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top