Lilly's Gravid Again!!!

[axis1]

Second Snowstorm of the Year!! Time to Bump This Thread!!

54 days after laying 9 nice-sized eggs, 5 of the 6 that were left finally were breached this morning by the heads of little snow hatchlings!! Didn't come at the BEST time (those of you who read my recent and current struggles in feeding 3 non-eaters know why), but it had to happen sometime!!

I'll try to keep a positive attitude with these babies. And I'm not even gonna TRY to feed them until one full week AFTER they have their first shed!!!

 

[DollysMom]

OMG, they are adorable! Keeping my fingers crossed for healthy eaters.

 

[axis1]

BTW!!

For anyone interested, I just started the fourth (4th) album in the public profile section. Unfortunately, the pix posted here are posted by the most recent ones FIRST, making them chronologically BACKWARDS. But on a positive note, anyone uploading pix to these albums also gets to have the pix re-sized automatically, significantly cutting down on the process to post pix in the first place. This is GREAT for folks like me who are busier than a dyke in a hardware store!

Thanx again to everyone who has been supportive, whether with advice, suggestions, or just words and/or thoughts. It's actually the thought that counts, no? :crazy01:

 

[axis1]

OMG, they are adorable! Keeping my fingers crossed for healthy eaters.

Thanx Dollysmom! You are the BEST!!!!

 

[Giga]

Aww, look at those little noses!

Best of luck with them; may they all be voracious XD

 

[Eavlynn]

Oh my goodness they are precious! I love pipping pics. I can't wait to see the little cuties when they meander out of their eggs! Congrats axis, keep us posted!

 

[Zombiegirl]

Congrats!!!!! I remember when I laid eyes on my very first corn...he was a teeny tiny baby snow and I fell in love

 

[axis1]

Snapped a couple more last night of the ones that breached their respective chambers, including one of the first two that actually emerged into the world.

Cute little buggers, ain't they?

 

[axis1]

Sorry, I have NO clue why these pictures sometimes flip or turn the wrong way and there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut solution in resolving it. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to this stuff, but it's probably because I'm too busy to actually seek the correct answer to the problem, so please pardon the dyslexic appearance of these pic posts!

Here goes the LAST pippy of the year, one of Lilly's 28 eggs laid that resulted in 22 healthy, happy, hatchlings! Not bad for an 8 year-old snake who was cohabbed with not one, but TWO males until the end of April of this year!

This is actually the LARGEST of the eggs she laid also, topping the scales at a whopping 13 grams!! Not too shabby, huh?

 

[DollysMom]

Beautiful! Nothing cuter than pippies and hatchlings.

 

[Giga]

Uch, they really are adorable <3

 

[axis1]

Here's a little cup o' corns for your Tuesday morning!!! (Cute little squiggly worms, aren't they?) They've been literally untouched since they first hatched and were allowed to successfully dry from their yolk. In this picture it shows how I discovered them in a makeshift hide I fashioned from a Dentyne Ice gum container - just crumpled up a paper towel inside to create a snug hide for them to go to, if they wanted, and discovered all six in there the next morning! I snapped this prior to separating them into their own shoeboxes! Tomorrow will make one week since they all hatched. None have shed yet and one is a behemoth at 11 grams out of the egg! Never had a corn hatchling that big.

 

[Nanci]

Those look like big babies! Mine are just hitting 7 grams, after five meals!

 

[Giga]

D'aww, it's a bucket of babies!

 

[Eavlynn]

A cup of cuteness

 

[axis1]

Those look like big babies! Mine are just hitting 7 grams, after five meals!

Yeah, I'm also pleasantly surprised! It appears that Lilly's second clutch was laid without her being in any type of crisis and it was the first of ANY clutch she laid that was actually laid in a laybox! Thanx mostly to your suggestions! (I hope I extended my gratitude prior to this!). In addition, Lilly is NOT a big girl, typically weighing around 330 grams at about 3 feet long!

As a matter of fact, the lightest of the most recently hatched (7 grams) out six snow corns is heavier than the largest of any of the sixteen hatched the week of 7/11 and at least 3 of those have eaten about 10 times! It's amazing how many variables goes into the whole process of mating and breeding a pair of corns! In addition, I can't stress how important it was, in MY case, to have this forum as a supplement to all I've read and experienced. Sometimes it's literally impossible to find in ANY book what just one person here can say to help in a given situation! For folks like me who are not the SHARPEST knives in the DISHWASHER, I would say that it could sometimes make the difference between life & death for a little sneaky one! If not THAT critical, at the very least, some of the things I've read here are things that I put into practice that have helped improve the quality of life for all of my snakes, though it is harder to measure qualitative as opposed to quantitative data. Just sayin'.

Thanx also to all who took the time to respond and for your ongoing support! You guys are THE BEST!!!!!!!

 

[Giga]

I have heard that cooler incubation temps, and therefore longer incubation times, can lead to bigger babies, at least in other species; could that be a factor here? Just mentioning it as a point of curiosity really - I'm glad you have such big, bonny baby snakes XD

 

[DollysMom]

I second the "cup of cuteness". Must be a a great hide cause they all liked it, lol. So cute. Yeah, 11 grams is huge. They look great!

 

[axis1]

Thanks guys!! (And Gals!!! :nyah

Appreciate all the love and whether they're a Cup o' Cuties or a Bucket o' Babies, they certainly ARE the nicest set of hatchlings Lilly ever laid thus far, though even Kinky the Runt (tiny amel stripe with the kinked tail that weighed 1.5 grams upon hatching!) is beautiful in it's own way (remember the pic I posted where she looked like she was gonna explode from eating a day-old pinky? I thought I'd re-post it just for shits & giggles)!

BTW Giga, you might be right about the cooler incubation theory. First clutch I tried to incubate last year began hatching at 45 days as I was practically cooking them at a steady 87 degrees Farenheit and a whopping 65% humidity. This year, Lilly's first clutch was laid (May 21st) outside of any laybox and under the stress of her extensively burrowing with impacted nostrils that made it appear as if she had an RTI. No pre-lay shed either! They WERE heated at around 82 degrees but began hatching at around 51-52 days until the last one breached at 55 days. The second, much smaller clutch of 9 eggs laid in July resulted in really HUGE eggs (for her, anyway!) even though 3 went bad for some reason. But I turned off the heater since it was really hot in my snake room and the ambient temp in the box was around about the same 82 degrees, but at night it might've dipped down to 79 sometimes. But the 6 remaining were just about as heavy as the 19 she laid the first time! Took exactly 54 days for 5 of 6 of these babies to breach their eggshells, then the 6th the next day.

So maybe a combination of slightly cooler incubation temps PLUS being laid under normal or good conditions. During her first clutch this year, I almost thought I was gonna LOSE her! Her mouth was wide open and she had that zombie stare which was scary in and of itself! In any case, I am WAY ahead of the game as Lilly and the two sires, Chili & Bozo, are all doing GREAT, not to mention her sole-surviving offspring from last year, Ozzy, who is a PORKER who weighed 166 grams prior to his last meal and he was a year old on July 30th!!!

As promised, here's a parting shot of Kinky struggling to swallow her first day-old!! Cute little bugger, ain't she?