HomeBreeder
Herphilious Lunacious
my own OMG
Russ,
I've discovered I'm on the same boat as you.... My motley sunglow (almost a complete hurricane motley) female from Shanlyn Williams laid eggs two days ago, completely to my suprise. Shanlyn tells me she's (Sunrise, that is) auto-double-clutched before, but they have been slugs.
Obviously since I wasn't anticipating this, Sunrise laid these eggs in her aspen, and I may have discovered them too late, although the humidiy was fairly high at the time. I'm unable to un-stick the 3 eggs that seem as if they might be viable, so I packed some vermiculite around them to trry to keep the humidity high enough for the one on top. (pic attached.)
Rhoman,
Part of my theory (the hormone/pheremone theory) is that if in fact it is some sort of proximity thing it may be possible to artificially determine the sex of your corn snakes. For example, let's assume for a minute, that you are able to get a clutch of eggs pretty much as they are individually laid (I'm not suggesting people disturb their layers - this is a hypothetical scenario) and could incubate each egg individually, in a way that prevented any such hormone or pheremone transfer between eggs. Let's go on, and assume that this actually does result in a high rate of determined sex, say 75-100% males.
Obviously, Kathy, Rich, Don, John, etc... wouldn't find a lot of use for a high-overhead way to produce mostly males, BUT if we actually had that data, them we could certainly convince SOME university somewhere to help us ascertain what the active chemicals involved are, and perhaps a way to subsequently fool eggs into thinking they really-really ought to be females.
It's funny that the leopard gecko trade seems to be on it's head for what I presume to be a few major factors: higher incubation temp = more females, while higher incubation temp also = less black coverage (per Tremper's experiments), and of course as a general rule, higher incubation temp = faster hatching. The result, as far as I can tell from where I'm sitting, is that males are more highly sought after than females - after all, what good is a female if you can't get her gravid?
^Curtis
Russ,
I've discovered I'm on the same boat as you.... My motley sunglow (almost a complete hurricane motley) female from Shanlyn Williams laid eggs two days ago, completely to my suprise. Shanlyn tells me she's (Sunrise, that is) auto-double-clutched before, but they have been slugs.
Obviously since I wasn't anticipating this, Sunrise laid these eggs in her aspen, and I may have discovered them too late, although the humidiy was fairly high at the time. I'm unable to un-stick the 3 eggs that seem as if they might be viable, so I packed some vermiculite around them to trry to keep the humidity high enough for the one on top. (pic attached.)
Rhoman,
Part of my theory (the hormone/pheremone theory) is that if in fact it is some sort of proximity thing it may be possible to artificially determine the sex of your corn snakes. For example, let's assume for a minute, that you are able to get a clutch of eggs pretty much as they are individually laid (I'm not suggesting people disturb their layers - this is a hypothetical scenario) and could incubate each egg individually, in a way that prevented any such hormone or pheremone transfer between eggs. Let's go on, and assume that this actually does result in a high rate of determined sex, say 75-100% males.
Obviously, Kathy, Rich, Don, John, etc... wouldn't find a lot of use for a high-overhead way to produce mostly males, BUT if we actually had that data, them we could certainly convince SOME university somewhere to help us ascertain what the active chemicals involved are, and perhaps a way to subsequently fool eggs into thinking they really-really ought to be females.
It's funny that the leopard gecko trade seems to be on it's head for what I presume to be a few major factors: higher incubation temp = more females, while higher incubation temp also = less black coverage (per Tremper's experiments), and of course as a general rule, higher incubation temp = faster hatching. The result, as far as I can tell from where I'm sitting, is that males are more highly sought after than females - after all, what good is a female if you can't get her gravid?
^Curtis
