Hatchling passed, but it was odd to me.

[OhhWatALoser]

This was something I have never even heard about, so I figure I would share my experience. First two things to note with this:
first we are dealing with the spider gene, which we know has oddities.
Second, I have been experimenting with my incubator and have made modification that last year were giving me day 50 hatches and also appeared to give me a very male heavy ratio (80+%). I changed some things this year and this is my first clutch, which hatched on day 48. The ratio of this clutch appears to be 50/50. I have 9 more egg in there, if nothing suggests a skewed sex ratio, I guess odds just fell that way last year and I see no positives to the early hatches and will be making changes to lengthen it again.

I bred a Lemonblast het Hypo to a Spider. She laid 4 good eggs and a slug iirc. Let them cook, we are checking on them daily for the past few days, day 47 no pips. day 48, 2 are already out of the egg, spinnerblast and a spider, 2 have their heads out, 2x spinnerblast. We never cut the eggs. So we hit 4 for 4 on the spider gene. The oddity in this is the spinnerblast already out of the egg. I see he is breathing, but acts dead, limp as can be, but then makes movements 2 or 3 times, like moving his head away from me and once even moving a few inches in the incubator. He has a huge yolk still, so I let him be. The spider is acting like a normal ball python.

The next day (this morning), he has absorbed his yolk and is still breathing, but still limp as can be, still in the exact same position as last night, he never moved the entire night. If he wasn't breathing I would think he dead. One spinnerblast came out of the egg and is fine. I come home from work and find the little guy has stopped breathing and passed. Other spinnerblast has came out of the egg and is fine.

So I have never heard of a snake basically be dead but not. It hatched itself and could of very well been the first one out, but then something made it go downhill from there. I'm not sure if the early hatch had anything to do with it and I am not sure if the spider gene had anything to do with it. The other 3 are doing great. looks like I have 1.1 spinner blast pos het hypo and 0.1 spider pos het hypo. The one that passed was a male.

So if this is a fluke, I guess it could be the early hatch (even though the other 3 are fine). If people have experienced the same with spiders, might be worth noting, or if other have experienced this with non-spiders, I guess it just happens sometimes and I have never heard about it. It's not pleasant to see, so I could see people not talking about it.

but here are the little ones that are doing great:

[ElliotNess]

Sorry to hear.. Did you increase heat and humidity to shorten the cycle? Benefit to doing so?

[dr del]

Just a theory but it could have been a developmental fault with the lungs?

That wouldn't matter when it was being oxygenated by the egg but would kick in when it began to absorb everything and have to start breathing on its own.

[OhhWatALoser]

Sorry to hear.. Did you increase heat and humidity to shorten the cycle? Benefit to doing so?

Actually unless I see a benefit, I'm not going to even reveal the method. Most animal do not even have their yolk absorbed and are smaller than an average hatchling (60-70 grams) But I did not increase heat so don't cook your eggs and I have always incubated close to 100% as I could get, so there isn't going any higher than what I already did. Last year was an experiment and I stumbled upon this by accident, I wasn't expecting it. day 48 for the 9 egg clutch is friday, if nothing comes from it, I'm going to forget about it. No reason to have people hatching less than ideal animals, just to shave a week of waiting.

Just a theory but it could have been a developmental fault with the lungs?

That wouldn't matter when it was being oxygenated by the egg but would kick in when it began to absorb everything and have to start breathing on its own.

Very well could be, wasn't doing good at all outside of the egg, but still made it for about 24 hours.

[greco]

Dr del, it's up to you whether you want to reveal your method or not... I can understand not wanting to encourage bad breeders. But personally I think that we learn as much, if not more, from failed experiments as we do from successful ones. If your method isn't working, maybe you should share it so good breeders know what NOT to try.

Either way, I'm sad about the lost hatchling. Sorry that happened. Experimentation is risky, but I do think that it's necessary. How else would we keep learning?

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[kc261]

I think it would be nice if you shared your method... just so others can avoid it.

I think rush jobs often end up being poorly done jobs. While I realize you didn't try to rush these hatchlings, I think it is not surprising that BPs that hatch earlier might have issues... and underdeveloped lungs would be one that makes a lot of sense. Lungs develop late compared to many organs, since they are not needed during the pregnancy/incubation period.

I highly suspect that the skewed sex ratio was just the odds gods having fun. I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that any species of snake has gender determined by incubation temp or any of those types of methods. As far as I am aware, all species of snake have gender determined by sex chromosomes.

Thanks for sharing. It is interesting.

[Archimedes]

I would agree with underdevelopment, or possible aspiration of fluid upon hatching that caused damage to the lung system and immune system via stress. No way to know without a necro tho.

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[OhhWatALoser]

I highly suspect that the skewed sex ratio was just the odds gods having fun. I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that any species of snake has gender determined by incubation temp or any of those types of methods. As far as I am aware, all species of snake have gender determined by sex chromosomes.

Some would say the same about humans, but there are cases of males with XX and females with XY, It's not black and white all the time, with us. Snakes could be the same way. I do not know this as fact and understand they are on the Z W system, but I know snakes are not studied nearly as much as humans. Stumble upon something like that and you gotta test it.

Also I am now thinking this still might be useful by lowering temps below the norm, so I will be turning down my incubator for the next clutch of eggs. Once I have some positive results for others to try and repeat, I will happily report what I did.