My corn had 21 eggs.

3 of those eggs were infertile and turned black after a few days.

13 hatched out successfully over 4 days.

A day after all of the 13 were out, I cut the remaining 5 eggs that were still unslit. Before cutting, all 5 were still very hard and had not deflated at all. When I cut them it didn't look good because the snakes inside were obviously all way smaller then the rest of them... and 3 of them were almost completely white (the other two though had perfect coloring) waited 2 days and nothing... no movement and no heads sticking out.

I removed them from the eggs. All 5 were pretty well developed, but VERY skinny. All 5 still had what looked like all of their yolks left.... so for whatever reason they did not absorb hardly any of it. 2 of the snakes looked to be fully developed. Three of, to my surprise and horror were still barely alive. they would jerk their heads around, or move a bit. I put the 5 in their own tub and sprayed them... but this morning they were all totally dead.

Anywhoo, it is pretty hard to write this because it seems obvious to me that I may have killed some of the snakes by removing them from the eggs too early.... They were after all still alive. I don't know how they could have made it though being so skinny and weak, having not absorbed any of the yolk....



The cluster of 5 eggs on the bottom right of the picture were the 5 bad eggs. The tub was kept at about 82 degrees. using my 16 tub rbi hatchling rack with back heat (couldn't use my incubator because that is at 89 degrees for my BP eggs)

I am just upset and confused. How could all the others turn out so perfect? why was this particular group of eggs doomed?

Hold nothing back. Analyze away. You won't hurt my feelings. If you feel I did something wrong, share your thoughts so we can ALL learn from this sad story.