White "alien heads" in snakes after eggs are cut

Hello,

So my friend got 9 eggs from a ball python (probably retained sperm) but did not have an incubator. Neither did I but I did manage to incubate a pigeon egg once with a makeshift one. So I do it again for BP eggs, of course temp 31'C, 100% humidity. So I do it with a simple box and a heating pad underneath and thermometer probe half way in the substrate - this is first time for me, I know about BP only from reading on the internet, have zero xp on this and just wanted to try to save the eggs. (Why we didn't try maternal incubation, current owner of the female is not interested in baby snakes... long story).

On day 56 one hatches. Normal baby, all good, on day 2 slithering around the "incubator". but rest of the 8 eggs are not hatching and it is now almost day 3. I candle the eggs and I see babies moving but of them 2 look very still, no movement at all. I was a bit scared for those 2 so I cut tiny slits - today, day 58 of incubation. Babies are OK, they are responsive, but their "alien" heads are completely white - I mean inside, outline is black-gray. The mother is a pastel and father is also. Does this means they are super pastel or something or are the babies underdeveloped? Are undeveloped babies with little color, or is there another problem? (I do not expect them to be some fancy morph, or that parents were hets, they were sold cheap and were not from a good breeder).

I do not want to poke further in the egg to see. I think I already did a lot of damage by cutting them maybe too early. I have added some warmed (to 31'C) saline to both eggs as they look a bit dry. I have covered the slits with pieces of saline infused tissue paper. And I am mortified now.

Eggs are all clumped together, so they can distribute heat. I check with laser thermometer but there is some uneven temperature. So temps are constant, but the heat pad heats uneven, so one place it goes 30-31'C, but on another spot 28-29'C.

What do you think?

Generally if one hatched the others are not far behind they should be ok with your cuts. As for what they are post pics and we can help identify

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Thank you for your answer.

I really don't care what they are as long as they are OK. I will take a picture tomorrow when I top the water in the egg again. I don't want to disturb them more than I have to.
I am just worried they look very pale, and thus that they are undeveloped. I could not find pictures of BP fetal development anywhere so I don't know when do they get their colors.

They very last thing they develop is color. I would just let them do their thing. They should be fine but I wouldn't add fluid to the eggs unless absolutely necessary. At this point they should be drying up absorbing all the fluids

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Thank you!
Those 2 were very dimpled. Basically flat as a pancake, so I was afraid they are dehydrated. I will post pictures of the whole thing tomorrow. I will not add more saline tomorrow!
I do hope I don't cause any deaths with my ignorance. I really want to save these poor babies and give them a chance.

Yes dimples are actually a good sign that they are close to hatching. They would have absorbed most of the fluids inside the egg hence why it sucks in. Ball babies are surprising resilient to our mistakes. Tho you still want to avoid mistakes if possible. I've seen eggs where the breeder mistook for a different clutch and cut extremely early and the babies were all fine. Like I said just let them do their thing abd they should do fine

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Hello,

So officially day 3 and no sign of new baby snakes. I put again wet tissue paper on the slits, which keeps the cuts nicely closed. Eggs are now bit dirty because BP that hatched is moving around a lot.

This is the box with the eggs. You can see slit I made on one, and second one is quite dirty looking one in lower right corner - it has a bigger slit but i cover it with wet tissue paper which keeps it closed:
https://ibb.co/vxdxjhD

And this is inside of the the eggs, the one I cut first and made a bigger cut:
https://ibb.co/HnTQTqJ

I can't do a good image without flash, but as you can see, snake is white. While looking around I saw also yolk sac, it was yellow, looked OK. I looked around youtube and looks like snakes that will be yellow later on are white when the eggs are cut. Can this be the case, so these are super pastels maybe, or there is something wrong with the snake?

Small plastic water dish is not to hold the humidity but just to make sure the baby that has hatched has water if it needs it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rosa

So my friend got 9 eggs from a ball python (probably retained sperm) ... The mother is a pastel and father is also. Does this means they are super pastel or something or are the babies underdeveloped?

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Something you should consider is that the male has nothing to do with this equation and that instead of retained sperm what you have is a parthenogenesis event. And if that is the case, then you might see some developmental problems

I would move the one neonate that is out over to a hatchling rack so it can't contaminate the other eggs.

Kudos for managing to improvise an effective incubator. :bow:

At three days after the first one hatched on its own I would probably cut the rest and just monitor them carefully - adding saline is fine but I generally only add water (stored in the incubator to avoid temp shocks ) and don't bother resealing the cuts as the integrity is compromised anyway and it may prevent you from seeing problems like debris or mould forming in the egg white ( remove it with a q-tip when you see it ) the blood vessels in the egg drain back inside the snake in the final stages so you can use that to make sure things are going well.

I look forward to seeing how they do for you. :D

I have news!
All looks good.
I have 3 babies out and in the hands of experienced person who will continue with their care. 1 normal, 1 pastel and 1 super pastel so far. The super pastel is from one of the eggs I cut, and the other egg I cut finally has a snake head out. One more egg pip normally. I am waiting on 4 more eggs to pip and it looks like babies will be OK. It was probably that temp was not even across the floor of the box, so some incubated on stable but lower, and some on stable but higher temps. As long as they are healthy I am happy. No problems with kinks or umbilicus so far, tummies are nicely closed and babies look big and are active - even the two more that pip. The super pastel is a bit smaller but still nothing to severe.

Thank you all. I never incubated snake eggs so I was mortified I will kill them all.

Here is the picture of the 3 babies that are out of the egg.

https://ibb.co/Sm21XgV

So another pip, and another super. I am waiting just on 3 more eggs.
It looks like "white" alien heads were due to super pastels and pastels :) and me being a noob and never seen that before.
Here is one pic of the eggs now. Egg in the middle is empty.

https://ibb.co/Vm14YzX

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rosa

So another pip, and another super. I am waiting just on 3 more eggs.
It looks like "white" alien heads were due to super pastels and pastels :) and me being a noob and never seen that before.
Here is one pic of the eggs now. Egg in the middle is empty.

https://ibb.co/Vm14YzX

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I'm so happy to hear they are all doing okay! They all look so cute! I hope the other 3 do well as well!

What beautiful babies!! Thank you for putting the time and care into saving these little guys!!

Thank you so much!
This morning I was so pleasantly surprised. Look at these goofballs :D Love them! Especially the backwards baby XD
https://ibb.co/FhCnhWK
(Sorry for bad quality box is e under a desk and I can not use flash)

I am now waiting for just one more egg to pip. The one close right corner. I even might cut that one tomorrow because it will be day 65 tomorrow.

So it looks like we will have a total of 4 pastels, 2 super pastels, 2 normal and a mystery :) It goes along that they are a result of breeding pastel f x pastel m so this should not be parthenogenesis. Which is even better because babies should be healthy.
Hope the last baby is alive and it will be 100% hatch rate.

So if anyone is interested how I made this incubator. I used one plastic box , tote type, but transparent. It was small, just enough to house the eggs with about 7 cm space around them. I found some vermiculite as a substrate, but I also put sphagnum moss around them to tuck them in. I did this because eggs ware given to me in a bunch, already glued tight, so some were "levitating" off the substrate. I made everything damp. One hole was drilled (small hole 5mm in diameter) at the front side and one at the back side of the box. I drilled one hole at the lid of the box and put in the thermometer probe trough it. I pushed the probe in the substrate half way - not all the way to the bottom. I taped the hole around thermometer probe so it can not move. I put a heat pad underneath the box and connected it with the thermometer. I set the thermometer to 31'C and it was oscillating between 30-32'C during the whole incubation.

The issues I had is that on day 45 eggs began to look dimpled, as if they were dehydrated even thou there was a lot of condensation inside the box. I don't know why, and more moisture to the substrate did not help a lot.
Also one big problem with this is that, when a snake hatches out, it can move the thermometer probe out of the substrate which will cause overheating. In my case I did not have a spare thermometer to make a separate bin for the hatched babies, so I had to wait for the guy that will take them to come. So I ended up sleeping on the floor, next to the incubator, and checking it constantly during day and night. Thinking about this it could be remedied by putting a cut out pvc pipe ring around the probe or something similar to block the snakes getting to the probe. But in my case I can't risk going out shopping for a pipe jut to come back to cooked babies, so I will have some more sleepless nights :) The probe could also be taped to the side half way in the substrate but in this stage I will have to leave the box open for too long and babies will cool down. I don't want to risk it.

So anyway. I think this is it. If I get, I will send one pic at the end of all babies out :)

Well last post here.
Last egg pipped last night. Transferred them all to new bin but they went just now to their new home :)
This is the rest of the babies:
https://ibb.co/N9s8crQ
and another normal in the egg :)