If your season was this bad would you start to question your practices?

[Tzeentch]

This is the season for a good friend of mine:

First the success:

5 black pastels and 4 normals! (from 11 eggs total :-/)

The bad:

Cut 5 eggs on day 50:
2 Bees, 2 spiders, 1 pastel.
Fine one day, next day 4 are dead. One lone bee survivor.

Pastel female: 6 slugs.

Normal female: 6 eggs, one moldy, The moldy egg has a dead snake, 5 still left to hatch.

Normal female: slugs.

Normal: 2 eggs left to hatch, started with 4 or 5, not sure.

Bacteria infection in the 4 eggs that were cut and died? I know he said he didn't disinfect them before cutting...

With all the lost eggs, I'm thinking some minor details may be being forsaken...

Any thought?

[Don]

From the sounds of it, I count six clutches and none of them had a 100 hatch rate. Sounds like something may be wrong. The slugs can happen to anyone, though I've heard that too high temps can cause more slugs.

Cutting on day 50 can create problems for an inexperienced breeder. I think impatience has killed more baby ball pythons than anything else.

[Rat160]

Out of ten females I only had three lay. Clutch one was 3 good eggs 3 slugs. second clutch was 5 slugs 2 good eggs, third clutch was 5 slugs.

So overall I got two clutches with a total of 5 eggs. out of the 5 eggs, I got 1 black pastel and 4 normals.

Yeah was a crappy year for me too.

[mojavereptiles]

Out of ten females I only had three lay. Clutch one was 3 good eggs 3 slugs. second clutch was 5 slugs 2 good eggs, third clutch was 5 slugs.

So overall I got two clutches with a total of 5 eggs. out of the 5 eggs, I got 1 black pastel and 4 normals.

Yeah was a crappy year for me too.

What temps are you keeping your snakes at, day time/night time? What temps during winter? I'm curious to see if there's a way to control slug production...

this year I had:
clutch 1: 3 eggs, 1 slug, 1 infertile egg (looked like a normal egg, but no veins) from Normal girl who was finicky eating last year (hatched 2 pastels and 1 normal)
clutch 2: 6 eggs from Normal girl I've had for years (hatched 3 pastels 3 normals)
clutch 3: 7 eggs from Normal girl I picked up in January (today is day 54, and they are dimpled heavily, so i think i'll be cutting today)
clutch 4: 5 eggs from Normal girl I've had for years
clutch 5: 3 eggs (1 boob) and 3 slugs from Normal girl I picked up in January
clutch 6: 8 eggs from Normal girl I've had for years
clutch 7: 5 slugs from Normal girl I picked up in January
clutch 8: 3 eggs, 2 slugs from Normal girl I picked up in January

Total: 35 eggs, 11 slugs (ugh!), 1 infertile egg. 9 hatched so far

However, 10 of the slugs are from girls I picked up with a set of 10 females from another local breeder in January - I don't know the conditions they were in prior to me, but he did mention that his snake room is kept at somewhere around 90 degrees normally which sounds way warm to me!

My snake room itself is usually around 82-86 during the day and 78-82 at night right now. I also don't know about his cooling practices, so the 10 slugs could simply be bad husbandry on the part of the guy I got them from. I'd like to find a good way to prevent slugging in the future though, so if temperature is a factor, it'd be very good to know!

Of all the girls that I've had for years kept under my care, only one had slugs, and it was just 1 slug (and an infertile egg) and I think part of her issue was just being a finicky eater last year.

I'm so sorry about your bad luck (and the original poster's friend's bad luck)! That truly stinks!!

[Rat160]

Mine was due to an RI that swept through my females so I had to put them on batryl which I'm sure killed te eggs. I also didn't cool this year read a lot about not cooling and thought I'd give it a try. Definitely will be cooling next season.


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[joebad976]

Mine was due to an RI that swept through my females so I had to put them on batryl which I'm sure killed te eggs. I also didn't cool this year read a lot about not cooling and thought I'd give it a try. Definitely will be cooling next season.

I am pretty sure RI's can be caused due to being too cold. So it sounds like you did cool them maybe a bit too much. I would double check your setup.

As far as slugs are concerned, I really think cooling them too much can cause an increase in slugs. Two years ago I had one clutch 8 slugs. Last year I had 6 slugs total out of 42 eggs. This year zero slugs out of 44 eggs. The only thing I changed was reducing the cooling period to about 4-6 weeks then bringing temps to a more consistent level with no night time drops.

[mojavereptiles]

Mine was due to an RI that swept through my females so I had to put them on batryl which I'm sure killed te eggs. I also didn't cool this year read a lot about not cooling and thought I'd give it a try. Definitely will be cooling next season.


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Ohhhh... I've heard bad news about that stuff, particularly for eggs. I had one male and two females (both girls I pulled completely from breeding and don't expect eggs from) get RIs in early December, but I kept their tubs very dry and very warm, at summer-like temps. With careful monitoring, they pulled out just fine and are doing great!

[Rat160]

I am pretty sure RI's can be caused due to being too cold. So it sounds like you did cool them maybe a bit too much. I would double check your setup.

As far as slugs are concerned, I really think cooling them too much can cause an increase in slugs. Two years ago I had one clutch 8 slugs. Last year I had 6 slugs total out of 42 eggs. This year zero slugs out of 44 eggs. The only thing I changed was reducing the cooling period to about 4-6 weeks then bringing temps to a more consistent level with no night time drops.

Cant be due to being too cold. I keep the ambient room temp at 85.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

You don't always get great odds, and perfect animals.

My breeding season so far has not been that great (well except for one clutch) but that's part of the game.

When you breed you take the good and the bad, you'll have to deal with bad odds, death, deformed babies etc.

Anyone that wants to get into breeding better think about all that before they start it's not all cool looking babies hatching the majority of the time.

Now as far as cutting can cutting have cause the issue it's possible, I do not recommend cutting to anyone, you should know what you are doing and know the risk involved, I have always cut and never lost an hatchling due to cutting the only one that were DOA were DOA before I cut.

For the rest it's just bad luck and there is always next season

[loonunit]

Yeah, the cutting early strikes me as a preventable loss. If his temperatures are a degree cooler than he thinks they are, his babies could be as much as a week farther behind than he thinks. And all he had to do was wait another 7-10 days and he'd have had two bees.

Mold happens, honestly. Maybe it was a roll-out.

Slugs, too. That's trickier: that might be pairing practices, but it could also just be those females and this year. What is his pairing procedure?

What happened with the last clutch from the normal?