Parthenogenesis occurred

My 25 year old bp has just laid 6 eggs, 4 with veins in.

I wasn't expecting it, so don't have an incubator set up, she is incubating them right now.

Should I try to incubate them or get rid of them as I've heard they can be sickly if they develop?

I'm not sure if maternal incubation is a good idea, as I want to get her back to a good weight as she is thin right now.

Thanks for any advice.

Really your call. There is a greater chance of defects in any that hatch, but I have to tell you that right now I have 3 lovable near-yearling Florida rat snakes from one
of my adult-NEVER-BRED females. Every year she & her sister lay dozens of eggs, many of which look good, & last year I decided to incubate the ones that appeared
to be good eggs- just out of curiosity.

Most of the eggs went "south", some almost hatched (had non-viable snakes that failed to emerge), but ultimately there were 3 tiny snakes looking back at me with
vigor. :D Of those 3, only one had some non-severe kinks (some bumps in her tail, plus a moderate mid-body kink that I feared might restrict adequate digestion-
but which is now very hard to even see, much less cause her problems). Their personalities couldn't be more different...one is quite feisty & still dislikes being handled-
like you'd expect from a wild rat snake, but the other 2 are excellent pets...all are eating & growing well. Wouldn't you know it, the one with kink imperfections is also
amelanistic...a pale peachy color with only a hint of pattern, with an exceptionally calm demeanor...she'll sit wrapped on my left hand while I feed her from my right...
without biting me or making any mistakes. And she climbs branches in her cage with ease, no trace of any disability. I've also been hand-feeding the other one- once
she decides to sit still, she also makes no 'mistakes' thus far, eating while held on my lap. They may out-grow this cute phase of being hand-feedable...these rat snakes
have formidable appetites & "skills", but right now they're showing their adaptability & intelligence...hate to think I might have missed it. ;)

I must admit that while I needed more snakes "like a hole in the head", I'm delighted to know them all. Does that answer your question?

Partho babies tend to be a little weaker and you can generally expect a high mortality rate. That said, I know people that have had partho clutches with >90% survival.

The bigger caution I would give you is that, since they will all be female, is that if you breed them once they are fully grown you will likely get terrible clutches and may lose them. Warren Booth has seen this in both boas and balls when he has bred partho animals he produced.


As far as MI... It should be fine, they have been doing it for millions of years before we started keeping them as pets. You can also try offering very small prey items, on rare occasions females on eggs will eat.

I agree ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ and I'd never breed these snakes in the future. Good luck whatever you decide.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

Really your call. There is a greater chance of defects in any that hatch, but I have to tell you that right now I have 3 lovable near-yearling Florida rat snakes from one
of my adult-NEVER-BRED females. Every year she & her sister lay dozens of eggs, many of which look good, & last year I decided to incubate the ones that appeared
to be good eggs- just out of curiosity.

Most of the eggs went "south", some almost hatched (had non-viable snakes that failed to emerge), but ultimately there were 3 tiny snakes looking back at me with
vigor. :D Of those 3, only one had some non-severe kinks (some bumps in her tail, plus a moderate mid-body kink that I feared might restrict adequate digestion-
but which is now very hard to even see, much less cause her problems). Their personalities couldn't be more different...one is quite feisty & still dislikes being handled-
like you'd expect from a wild rat snake, but the other 2 are excellent pets...all are eating & growing well. Wouldn't you know it, the one with kink imperfections is also
amelanistic...a pale peachy color with only a hint of pattern, with an exceptionally calm demeanor...she'll sit wrapped on my left hand while I feed her from my right...
without biting me or making any mistakes. And she climbs branches in her cage with ease, no trace of any disability. I've also been hand-feeding the other one- once
she decides to sit still, she also makes no 'mistakes' thus far, eating while held on my lap. They may out-grow this cute phase of being hand-feedable...these rat snakes
have formidable appetites & "skills", but right now they're showing their adaptability & intelligence...hate to think I might have missed it. ;)

I must admit that while I needed more snakes "like a hole in the head", I'm delighted to know them all. Does that answer your question?

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Thanks for the advice, its awesome you have a partho ratsnake that's doing well.
From the 6 bps I've heard of that were partho, 4 died and 1 had a defect like a lump, something to do with the umbilical scar.
I decided not to keep them, I would probably screw up the incubation anyway as I've never done it before.
And being an older snake, I guess there could be more chance of defects.
The whole egg laying thing has been a bit stressful, cause its meant to be about 30 days from prelay shed, but mine did it in 48 last year and 43 this year, I was paranoid they would never come and I would have to get them removed surgically.
I'm sure there's no eggs left inside her, but its possible theres a slug, but nothing I can do really, she's lost about 1kg in weight, from 2900g to 1900g, so I've gotta get her eating next week.

Thanks again

My female bullsnake has laid up to 20 eggs each year for the past 3 years. I just toss them out. I feel sorry for her because she loses so much weight. I try to get the weight back on her but she's never gotten her original girth back since this all started.

Oh crumbs, are they live eggs with veins, or just plain eggs?
How old is she?
I don't get why mine has just started doing this from last year, and none of the years before.

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Originally Posted by colin-java

Oh crumbs, are they live eggs with veins, or just plain eggs?
How old is she?
I don't get why mine has just started doing this from last year, and none of the years before.

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I didn't see any veins. I assumed they'd all be infertile. She was hatched in late June 2013 so she'll be 7 in a few weeks. I want to get her back to size but don't want to feed her too often either. Right now she's eating about every 10 days. I thought weekly feedings might be too frequent at her age but I'm sure she'd love it. A 25 year old snake is a nice achievement. Congratulations!

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Originally Posted by EL-Ziggy

My female bullsnake has laid up to 20 eggs each year for the past 3 years. I just toss them out. I feel sorry for her because she loses so much weight. I try to get the weight back on her but she's never gotten her original girth back since this all started.

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My goofy FL rat snakes have been doing this for years, & their first clutches are up to 27 eggs (usually over 20) & their second smaller clutches are typically upper teens. :O It's "nature's way" of insisting on procreation when it appears that no mate was available. Like your bull snake, my FL gals are only about 5', while their same-age brothers are each about 7'. I keep hoping they'll stop doing this but so far, it looks like they're both getting set to lay eggs again this year. We're "in the same :snake: club", lol. I have no trouble tossing out the eggs that are obvious duds, but the ones that are firm, white & look good...it's a challenge for me. :rolleye2:

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Originally Posted by EL-Ziggy

I didn't see any veins. I assumed they'd all be infertile....
....A 25 year old snake is a nice achievement. Congratulations!

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Sometimes you have to wait a few days for the veins to show up real well...you might be surprised how many are potentially "live". ;)

And yes, I agree...Congratulations colin-java, on your 25 year old snake! :gj:

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Originally Posted by colin-java

...I don't get why mine has just started doing this from last year, and none of the years before.

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I suspect (?) there might be some sort of "last ditch effort" hormonal trigger when females get older & haven't yet reproduced...a way to save the species from extinction? :confusd:

Years ago I was given an older rosy boa that was doing poorly in a nature museum & she kept trying to reproduce also...she'd laid slugs in the past, but with me, finally had one live neonate that lived 8 mos. before expiring naturally from defects. She had terrible muscle tone, & thus it was very difficult for her to push out slugs, & I didn't want her to do that again, so I made the difficult choice of giving her a healthy mate, & she "re-paid" me :rolleyes: with 5 successful years of healthy, robust baby rosy boas, ALL of which thrived.

When I tried to get her to quit (halfway thru those reproductive years) she nearly died trying to push out the slugs...so that's why I let her re-mate for the remainder: live rosy boas pretty much come out on their own- it was actually easier on her & she lived some years beyond all that, to around 26 years (assuming the museum was correct about her age when she was given to me). Nature IS full of surprises! :cool: She was truly an awesome snake & while I had NO intention of ever breeding ANY rosy boas, I was glad to have known her.

Thanks, maybe I can get her up to 30, but this egg business takes its toll every year.
I think the key to long life is to not feed them so much, so their livers don't burn out so quick.
I'd still rather give her more food so she doesn't feel hungry all the time, but they probably don't feel hunger the same way people do.

Your theory seems to make sense, perhaps if she had babies 20 years ago she wouldn't be doing this now

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Originally Posted by colin-java

Thanks, maybe I can get her up to 30, but this egg business takes its toll every year.
I think the key to long life is to not feed them so much, so their livers don't burn out so quick.
I'd still rather give her more food so she doesn't feel hungry all the time, but they probably don't feel hunger the same way people do.

Your theory seems to make sense, perhaps if she had babies 20 years ago she wouldn't be doing this now

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I hope so (re "up to 30"). Eggs DO take a toll...I'd love to find the "off" switch on mine. I agree that if yours had reproduced years ago, she'd not likely be doing this now.

I think our captive snakes feel plenty of hunger...they cannot thermo-regulate as well in captivity as in the wild...where they'd have more "down time" (cooler temps.)- their appetites are certainly driven by their fairly-constant environmental warmth.

Thanks, I'm not sure what my bp is doing now, she's been exploring the vivarium for a few hours now on and off.
She doesn't look distressed, but in an exploring mode, flicking her tongue a bit.

I cleaned everything, even the glass, and gave her a bath to get the egg smell off.
Its been about 1.5 days since laying the 6 eggs.

Is it just the new smells or do you think she's looking for food, I was gonna feed her in a few days.

She might well be ready for food now... After mine lay eggs, they're so tired & dehydrated that they often soak in their large water bowls for a couple days...but these
are FL rat snakes, so maybe not quite the same. Anyway, as long as they're adequately hydrated, they get voraciously hungry after egg-laying. You know your snake
better than any of us can guess.

BTW, just to be clear: even when snakes are hungry (or literally "starving" as with a rescue), they MUST first have adequate hydration in order to digest properly.

My rat snakes seem to know this instinctively...that's why after they lay eggs, they soak in their water bowls for a few days sometimes. They're tired & hungry, sure,
but hydration always comes first. Otherwise they might end up regurgitating their food. I can tell by their keen interest (in nearby motion) when they're ready to be
fed...& usually they stop soaking & start looking around also. I'm sure your snake will "let you know" when she's ready for food also...;)

Good news, I thought I would share...

She has just had a 200g (approx) F/T rat!

She grabbed it within 5 mins too, didn't have to wait hours like I sometimes do.

Its a good sign she is out of maternal-mode, and a good sign she will continue to eat.
If she doesn't eat again, then at least she's had a good meal now I suppose.

Congratulations, that's great to hear. :gj: If she's anything like any snake I've ever had that reproduced (fertile or not) she'll be eating ravenously for a while now,
so now is not the time to run out of feeders...;)

Thanks, its been close to 8 months now without feeding.

She dropped from 2900g to 1900g and 3000g to 2200g last year cause of the eggs.

She normally would go off food for maybe 5 or 6 months around winter without losing much weight at all, when she was younger she would usually eat most of the year though.

I have a fresh pack of 15 F/T rats 150-250g, so no problems there.

I'm wondering if they would try to build follicles and lay eggs if their weight was low.
If I get her back up to 3000g, which is her natural healthy weight, is that gonna make her try for eggs again next year?
Perhaps if she wasn't a good weight, she wouldn't try for eggs, but if she did lay eggs I know she would be a skeleton after it.

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Originally Posted by colin-java

Thanks, its been close to 8 months now without feeding.

She dropped from 2900g to 1900g and 3000g to 2200g last year cause of the eggs.

She normally would go off food for maybe 5 or 6 months around winter without losing much weight at all, when she was younger she would usually eat most of the year though.

I have a fresh pack of 15 F/T rats 150-250g, so no problems there.

I'm wondering if they would try to build follicles and lay eggs if their weight was low.
If I get her back up to 3000g, which is her natural healthy weight, is that gonna make her try for eggs again next year?
Perhaps if she wasn't a good weight, she wouldn't try for eggs, but if she did lay eggs I know she would be a skeleton after it.

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I would NEVER reduce food in the hopes that any of my snakes would forego their attempts at reproduction...just never. In the wild, insufficient food would normally result in snakes skipping reproduction, and it's thought that they may skip every other year anyway, but in captivity, I'd never reduce their food to try to cause that. In the wild, many snakes just don't survive either...along with a low body weight might come some sort of infection that they'd be less able to fight off & recover from. Pets deserve the best we can do...wild snakes are sadly without help, & predators are there to finish them off when they slow down.

In my previously mentioned example of that elderly rosy boa that I had for the latter 11 years of her life, I fed her as much as she wanted, always, & finally her body said "OK that's enough [reproduction]"...but that was after producing healthy offspring for 5 out of 6 years, & the one year I tried to get her to "quit" early by not allowing her to mate, it was actually worse for her; because of her poor muscle tone (from years of poor feeding while she was kept in the nature museum before she was turned over to me to keep). That year she nearly died (& would have had she been a wild snake with no one helping her) because pushing out those slugs was much harder than having live neonates that pretty much find the "exit" on their own. I kept her hydrated & tube-fed while she slowly regained her energy, & in time she was back to normal. While I have no reason to think, much less suggest, that your snake has poor muscle tone as my late rosy boa did, I still just wouldn't try to prevent her production of eggs by reducing her food. She might also produce anyway, but then have trouble expelling them, who knows? She's your snake, so ultimately it's your call- that's my "2 cents" though.

I would never underfeed on purpose (unless they were overweight), it was just a theoretical question.

Besides, she goes off food anyway for several months each year so it's better if she has some fat storage for that.

Although if for some reason she doesn't keep eating over the next few months, then that might stop her reproducing next year, or like with the boa you obtained it could cause complications if she did make eggs.

Rest assured, I will try to get her back to around 3000g, and if she wants eggs again then so be it.

She has been staying in the hide box a bit more the last few days, so her behaviour is getting a bit more normal.
But I guess with the glass front covered up the whole vivarium itself is like a hidebox so it's not unexpected for her to be outside of the hidebox more if that makes sense.

Thanks

All the best with your gal...I don't expect her to go off-food for quite a while this year- if at all, but only time will tell. We'll be curious, right along with you, to see what's next.

Hey I had the same thing happen to me about 61 days ago. Partho in a 10 yr old female that I never bred. I just saw them pip last night. There were 4 slugs and 4 viable ones, and 3/4 hatched, and I expect the last to hatch as well as the egg is not discolored. I did maternal incubation with some vermiculate and later spagnum moss in a standard Ball Python hide with a UTH set to 90 on the thermostat. Humidity stayed around 87-90%, moist but not wet. Haven't read the whole thread but if you're going along with it then nest of luck!

Wow, that's cool, best of luck with your babies and I hope their mother gets back to normal soon too.

I decided not to go through with incubation for a few reasons, one being I don't know how to artificially incubate them correctly, and I didn't wanna do it maternally cause she had lost a 1000g in weight and taking off another 2 months doesn't give her much time to put weight back (assuming I could get her eating again) before October/November when she goes off feed again.

Its funny though, after I took her off the eggs to candle them, and put her back on, she did coil them, but then left them and started crawling around the guard for the heater, as though being pulled off the eggs made her not bothered about them so much.

Post pics of your babies when you get chance, best of luck.

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Originally Posted by colin-java

Wow, that's cool, best of luck with your babies and I hope their mother gets back to normal soon too.

I decided not to go through with incubation for a few reasons, one being I don't know how to artificially incubate them correctly, and I didn't wanna do it maternally cause she had lost a 1000g in weight and taking off another 2 months doesn't give her much time to put weight back (assuming I could get her eating again) before October/November when she goes off feed again.

Its funny though, after I took her off the eggs to candle them, and put her back on, she did coil them, but then left them and started crawling around the guard for the heater, as though being pulled off the eggs made her not bothered about them so much.

Post pics of your babies when you get chance, best of luck.

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It is quite late in the season to be laying eggs; that makes sense.

I posted some pics in my thread, link here: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...14#post2738214

Cute looking babies, did you get all 4?

Did you take them out as soon as they left the egg, you don't want their mom to crush them.

Is the patterning the same, or very close? Cause they would be clones

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Originally Posted by colin-java

...Is the patterning the same, or very close? Cause they would be clones

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FYI, they may NOT look alike...the 3 "Florida" rat snakes that I hatched out last summer (via apparent parthenogenesis) sure don't. BUT, that might be due to the fact that their mom is a mix of Yellow, Gulf Hammock & maybe Everglades rat snakes that were captive-bred, then sold to me many years ago as young snakes (that I've never allowed to breed, & I actually have 2.2, but they've never been near each other & they live in different rooms.) Anyway, you'd think such offspring would ordinarily be identical when the mom is NOT a mix, but from what I've read, you can't quite count on that either. It's complicated...:D but ever so cool!

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Originally Posted by colin-java

Is the patterning the same, or very close? Cause they would be clones

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They are not clones, they are HALF-clones

And patterning is a stochastic process at the genetic/cellular level so the patterning will be different on all of them. The same way identical twins have different fingerprints

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Originally Posted by asplundii

They are not clones, they are HALF-clones

And patterning is a stochastic process at the genetic/cellular level so the patterning will be different on all of them. The same way identical twins have different fingerprints

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I guess I need to read this...

https://genetics.thetech.org/ask-a-g...esis-not-clone

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Originally Posted by colin-java

I guess I need to read this...

https://genetics.thetech.org/ask-a-g...esis-not-clone

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That is a fairly decent break-down. Only caveat I would put on it is that the sex part is incorrect with respect to ball pythons (really, all pythons and boas if you want to be technical) as balls are X/Y and not the Z/W that Komodos are

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Originally Posted by asplundii

That is a fairly decent break-down. Only caveat I would put on it is that the sex part is incorrect with respect to ball pythons (really, all pythons and boas if you want to be technical) as balls are X/Y and not the Z/W that Komodos are

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I thought everything was X and Y, at least within vertebrates, but its much more complex than that...

In snakes[edit]

Snake W chromosomes show different levels of decay compared to their Z chromosomes. This allows for tracking the shrinking of W chromosomes by comparing across species. Mapping of specific genes reveals that the snake system is different from the bird system. It is not yet known which gene is the sex-determining one in snakes. One thing that stood out was that Python show little signs of "W-shrinking".^[6]
Boa and Python families are now known to probably have an XY sex-determination system.^[17] Interest in looking into this came from female family members capable of parthenogenesis, or producing offspring without mating. In 2010 a female Boa constrictor that produced 22 female offspring in this manner was found in the wild. By then it was presumed that such a pattern was produced by WW chromosomes.^[18] Python bivittatus and Boa imperator, similarly only produce female offspring; their genomes share male-specific single nucleotide polymorphisms identifiable by restrictive enzyme digestion. Their chromosomal origins, however, differ: Python's XY are similar to other snakes' ZW, while Boa XY maps to microchromosomes in other snakes.^[19] The female-only pattern is in contrast to the ZW Colubroidean parthenogens, which always produce male (ZZ) offspring.^[20]

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Originally Posted by colin-java

I thought everything was X and Y, at least within vertebrates, but its much more complex than that...

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Nope. All mammals are X/Y, all birds are Z/W, amphibians lizards, snakes and insects have both (which is to say that some do X/Y and some do Z/W and not they have all four at once)

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

All the best with your gal...I don't expect her to go off-food for quite a while this year- if at all, but only time will tell. We'll be curious, right along with you, to see what's next.

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She just shed today, and I gave her a 220g F/T rat warmed up and she constricted it in about a second.
So 2 out of 2 now.
She wouldn't settle in her hide box the week following the eggs, but then slowly started to settle a bit more.
Then after the first rat she hasn't come out of the box at all, so it looks like things are getting back to normal now.