Happy and Sad News

[jjspirko]

As many of you know I breed African House Snakes. I just recently picked up two from Dr. Neil Ford of UT Tyler and one was a bit small to breed for my taste. Neil had already bred both so my plan was give both a few weeks of heavy feeding then breed the bigger girl and hold off on the smaller gal with heavy feeding through the winter.

Everything went well and the bigger girl bred to one of my males strait away and is now gravid. All good news.

Next bout of good news apparently the smaller female was still carrying sperm from her last breeding and has been gravid a while and just laid eggs yesterday.

The bad news is I never knew she was gravid, she was not very distended, never stopped eating, etc. So she laid in her water bowel a total of 10 eggs and due to that fact at least 4 if not 5 are bad. The bowel was low on water so at least 5 are still good 1 of them is very iffy.

The other down side is Neil was breeding purely for research and did not care about color, pattern, etc. In fact I have no idea what the sire looked like. So bad news, I lost 5-6 eggs and have no genetic details on the father.

But the really good news is I now have 5-6 extra babies on the way and the babies could be something cool. The other good news is momma is chowing down on food and should get beefed up nice before she meets one of my males for a controlled breed,

[muddoc]

Congrats and apologies all in the same breath Jack. I hope you get some great looking babies from those eggs, and I hope mom packs the weight back on and comes back strong.

[kc261]

Wow. Too bad you lost some of the eggs but that must have been exciting to look in on her and see eggs you weren't expecting! Hopefully the ones that remain will hatch out ok.

I would have thought she'd be smarter than to lay the eggs in the water in the first place? Animals are supposed to have pretty good instincts about keeping their young alive. Then again, a friend of mine once had a goose that insisted on building her nest where it washed out every time it rained. Is this sort of mistake common with snakes?

It will be interesting to see what the babies look like. Do you know what sort of research the previous owner was doing? Do you even know if the sire was the same species?

[jjspirko]

House Snakes for some reason seem to desire to lay eggs in water bowels specifically in the absence of a laying box.

When I know a female is close to laying I remove her water bowl and replace it with a very small one and provide a laying box with moist substrait in it.

I don't know why they do this but many people have reported the same thing,

[Jonny2184]

Wow, that is crazy, I didnt know they would do that... kinda weird!
Maybe you could ask Dr. Neil Ford who she was breeding with... maybe he still knows, or has that same snake eh? so you could go over and look at it?!
But Congrats on the extra babies! You better some us a few pictures once they hatch!?!?!?

[joepythons]

Wow a sorry and congrats all in one thought

[jjspirko]

Update! Worse then I thought only three eggs made it.

There is good news though. I have fought this issue a long time and have had mothers in spite of having a beautiful laying box still choose their bowels and kill eggs, no wonder they have to through four clutches a year to survive in the wild! I have tried very small bowels but then you really have to stay on making sure they don't run low on water. This latest loss got me to think about a solution.

I think I have a great one. I now provide a small ramkin dish, key is a pretty big AHS can fit into a pretty small ramkin so the solution is put a golf ball in the ramkin dish. So simple but it lets you keep a decent supply of water in the enclosure and should make it pretty undesirable for the snake to lay in the dish. The ball will also pretty much keep just about all the eggs out of the dish if the snake mule headily still insists in laying in it.

Sometimes there are such simple solutions to problems, I wonder why I did not think of this sooner,

[littleindiangirl]

Wow, thats great news [the golf ball techinique, not losing eggs]. I just checked out your website and it is overflowing with knowledge on these beautiful snakes! Great job, its a very well put together and informative site!

[Blu Mongoose]

I have an assortment of clean river rocks that I put in a dish when I don't want them actually in the water. Keep them for that purpose, works great. Good luck with future clutches. We'll need pics.

[jjspirko]

I have an assortment of clean river rocks that I put in a dish when I don't want them actually in the water. Keep them for that purpose, works great. Good luck with future clutches. We'll need pics.

Another great idea! Thanks,