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Questions???

Kethryanne

Kethryanne

New member
I just finished reading "the corn snake guide" from bill and Kathy love. (2005 edition) and now have some questions that I hope someone can clear up for me.
1) double clutching is it possible to prevent? There is all kinds of info on promoting and dealing with it. I noticed in the forum there was info stating that it seemed to be a genetic/familial tendency. If you have no idea of your snakes genetics (pet store acquisition, wild caught) will this show up with the first breeding or in subsequent years as the snake ages?

2) the book and on the forums it states that female snakes can retain sperm from a mating to fertilize eggs long after the mating actually occurs. In this case any ideas of how long of a time frame that this is possible? If your snake mates this year is there a possibility of any of those sperm surviving to fertilize eggs the next year after you have mated her with a different male. Like when mating your snakes to prove out the possible hets? Testing for stargazing? Etc? Do you need to wonder the third year breeding may show three different fathers( if there were three different snakes from different years?

3) if you have a "stargazers" like snake is there a way to determine the genetics without breeding?

4) when your female ovulated and reabsorbs the eggs does she reovulate them at a different time or are they lost opportunities like in humans? Lol

5) how many times do you test out each possible het for your snakes to say that yes it for sure does not or does have the genes?

Thanks. BTW awesome book Kathy and excellent a resource for newbies.
 
1) Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to keep a female from double clutching. Much to my chagrin, most of my females will double clutch if they are bred for the first clutch, even if it kills them, which has happened. If I try to give them a year off, some will still give me a clutch, but usually won't double clutch that year. And I have had a female triple clutch.

2) Females can retain sperm even into the next year, but that is rare, and even less so if the female is bred to a fresh male in the spring. I personally have had a female fertilize an entire clutch from retained sperm from the first pairing even when I bred her to a different male for her second clutch that year. It took me several breeding attempts with the offspring to realize that the second male was not their father. I no longer switch males with a female in the same year. You shouldn't have to worry too much about retained sperm when test breeding, and definitely not into a third year.

3) If you have a snake exhibiting the signs of stargazing, the only way to prove the genetics is by test breeding, but then, if it shows the signs, that is a pretty good indication that it is a stargazer, although perhaps an injury or something else could be the cause, however unlikely.

4) Reabsorbed eggs are gone for good, but female corn snakes will produce plenty more!

5) When proving out hets, if you get even one offspring with that gene, then you know it's there. However, depending upon if you are breeding the poss het to a known het or a homozygous snake, and the number of eggs produced/hatched out, you may need a second pairing to definitely say the snake being tested is not het for a gene as Murphy can and will screw with your results whenever possible. If I bred a poss het caramel to a homozygous caramel, got a clutch of 28 eggs, all hatched and not a single caramel was produced, I would be pretty confident it wasn't het. But if I bred the same poss het caramel to a known het caramel, got a clutch of 7 eggs and no caramels hatched out, I would try again.
 
When testing for unknown hets I have a classic example here.

I bred two Classic (Normal) Texas Rat Snakes to each other this past season.
The result was 13 eggs. 5 babies hatched out Leucistic and the other 8 babies hatched out Classic (Normal).

It can safely be deduced that the parents are both definitely Het Leucistic.
It can also be safely deduced that the 8 Classic (Normal) babies are also Het Leucistic.

Just my two bits worth.
 
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