Update....and question about double clutch.

[marisa]

Well I am happy to report that my female corn (story in this thread: http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45992) has passed the empty egg we aspirated but were not able to remove. She looks great and the small injection hole looks to be healing over just fine. She is also in her normal piss mood......which I am happy too see since she was getting a bit "tired" at the end there which is not normal attitude for her at all.

Now I have a question......

It seems the general thought is that infertile eggs are harder to pass than fertile (which worked out true in this case as well) so I am confused as to what I should do now...... This girl is a big double clutcher and I KNOW she is going to lay another clutch. After her ordeal I don't care/didn't want to breed her again, but should I to ensure fertile/easier to pass eggs since she will double clutch anyway? Or should I just allow nature to take its course and let her lay a second dud clutch?

Thanks for any input, and she is looking 100% better since you guys helped me out and I did the aspiration.

Marisa

[Jeff_Favelle]

Fertile clutches are 1000x times easier to pass than infertile clutches. I wouldn't let her lay duds.

[marisa]

She is going into blue now so I assume she will be ovulating again soon after she sheds.

I am going to be supplementing her rodents with calcium (since it seems the first clutch had a lack of it by the looks of the egg shells) and put her in with him after the shed. I hope the second clutch goes better than this first one! :( This whole thing is making me nervous now but I know they know what they are doing at least. :P

Marisa

[Katt]

I think I missed something here. What makes fertile clutches easier to pass than say unfertile clutches? Is this due to the eggs being bigger and thus easier to move through the oviduct?

Fertile clutches require more resources than infertile and we find that slugs are laid earlier than good eggs.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Yes, you did miss something here. Nothing to do with size. Its all about malleability. How pliable it is. Also, fertile eggs get a different coating.

Fertile clutches require more resources than infertile and we find that slugs are laid earlier than good eggs.


Huh? What gave you that impression? All that infertile means is that the sperm didn't make it into the egg during ovulation. The female puts the EXACT same amount of amniotic fluid into the egg regardless of whether the little spermies make it or not. Please explain how fertile clutches require more resources from the female. The eggs aren't fed. Once they ovulate and are fertilized, they just sit there. They don't take up food or imbibe anything from the female, so a fertile egg uses no more resources from the female than a dud does.

[marisa]

She laid these eggs about 10 days after her pre lay shed. Most are fertile. Only three are infertile (the one that got stuck, and two others laid normally) and they came out last in line. Who knows if this matters or not. I just know the facts and they are that she has had a crappy time so far, she IS going to lay another clutch, and I don't want to harm her.

Marisa

[vanderkm]

Glad to hear your female is recovering Marisa.

Our experience is limited, but slugs have been much harder for females to pass and have taken longer overall to clear out. We actually bred our cal king this year just so she wouldn't have to go through another year of passing infertile eggs.

I would let her breed again to make sure that if she does double clutch again (from what I recall the females that do it, always tend to do it whether bred or not) - at least they will be fertile and easier to pass - but I would bet if she had a fertile second clutch last year from retained sperm, she will do it again this year.

Just based on my limited experience though.

mary v.

[marisa]

Thanks Mary. Last year they bred about 3 or so times......she laid her first clutch of 19, with no troubles and they were 100% fertile. She laid her second clutch of 14 with only 1 fertile, but no complications.

Last night she took a nice big rat which I injected with extra water, and calcium just to make sure she is getting hydrated after the stress of the aspiration, and has enough vitamins/calcium for another clutch. She took it like a champ and really, her body looks in amazing shape for laying 26 eggs.

She is in blue right now, so I am going to get another meal into her early this week, then throw her in with the male a couple more times to ensure fertile eggs. I hope its a small easy to pass clutch and you can bet I'll be watching close.

Marisa

[BoidKeeper]

IMO you could either not feeder her reducing the chances that she'll double clutch at all or you could feed her like mad to help make the clutch fertile. She may ovulate yes but if she doesn't have enought fat stored to forum yolk she may just reabrorb her follicles and not have any eggs. Then again if she is going to lay for sure no matter what then may as well feed her like mad.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Katt]

I've found females that slug out entirely do better than females that have some good eggs and some bad eggs. I have yet to hear of a female get egg bound on an entirely infertile clutch.

[marisa]

Trevor- That's a good point. Unfortuantly this is such a large snake (50 inches and THICK), with such good body weight after laying, I highly doubt she will re-absorb the follicles.

If I didn't feed her a smidge between now and then, she'd still have enough weight leftover for a third if they did thirds. She is not obese, just LARGE. :) So I think I'll feed her up, make sure she is hydrated and has ample calcium and hope for the best.

Marisa

[jjnnbns]

Do most corns double clutch every season or is there something you do ahead of time to ensure this? Is this true for most snakes? I always assumed that in order to double clutch a female that you would have to do something extra (ie put with a male again)

Hmmm, learn something new every day

[vanderkm]

Katt - our first female corn become egg bound with a clutch of pure slugs. She had never been exposed to a male (was sold to us as a male by people who had only one) and passed one slug before we knew she was a female. She actually had a humid hide available that would have functioned as a lay box, but ended up passing only a small number of slugs before retaining all the rest. We were advised to wait it out, try massage, etc. but she was not able to pass them all - there were slugs through the full length of the uterus when we had a necropsy done. She was not a big female, had never been brumated, don't know what else might have contributed to egg binding, but losing her certainly made us senstive to the fact that it can happen even with a female that was never bred.

jjnnbns - some individual corns, kings and milks will double clutch whether or not they are bred again after their first clutch - can be fertile (and often are) from retained sperm. Peublan milks will even triple clutch. Seems to depend on the individual female (genetic predisposition in some lines??) and her nutritional condition.

mary v.

[Jeff_Favelle]

I've found females that slug out entirely do better than females that have some good eggs and some bad eggs. I have yet to hear of a female get egg bound on an entirely infertile clutch.



Small sample size. That's good data, and I'm happy that all your infertile clutches came out easily, but that doesn't extrapolate into every colubrid clutch throughout time.

Also, the thing with a slug is, even if aspirated, they don't do anything!! They are just solid chuncks of endosperm! So if you can't aspirate it to "deflate" it, then its a LOT harder to pass.

[Katt]

True, Jeff, just offering my experience. Hence the "I have found".

I am interested in knowing where you got your info about fertile clutches being 1000x easier than infertile clutches, however.

Mary that's very interesting to know!! Was that female corn in the same room as a male?? We had a corn that would lay slugs without a male at all, but did not have any problems whatsoever. She too was a bit on the small side.

You just have to feel sorry for these poor female snakes. So many things can go wrong even when you're doing everything right!

[sapphire_moon]

don't mean to hijack the thread, but what I've seen plenty of pics of fertile eggs, what do slugs look like?

[Jeff_Favelle]

Harder, shinier, yellower.

[sapphire_moon]

oh, since they are called "slugs", I thought they would be like small and squishy, maybe even brown or something like that.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Ha ha no. Slugs because they are duds.

[vanderkm]

Katt - there was a male in the same room - wonder if exposure could have contributed to getting her going?? There is just too much I don't know about how the reproductive systems function in these guys.

mary v.

[Katt]

Mary for sure!

Have you ever noticed that when one snake is in blue, you find 1/3 to 1/2 are blue as well?? Blue or in the blue. Keep in mind that snakes have a highly developed sense of smell/taste. They communicate via scent. There are documented studies that show female/male snakes react to pheromones given off male and female snakes. I can't name them (the studies) off hand, so you'll have to excuse me.

Snakes in the wild find each other via scent trails. So without a doubt, your female scented that male. That could have been enough to stimulate her to produce. Even you casually touching her with the scent of the male in the air could be enough. We have lots of female snakes that when in breeding mode, twitch at just a soft stroke down the back.

Slugs are also weirdly shaped, usually pointed at the ends, and feel like hot water bottles when freshly laid. Colubrid slugs, that is.

[vanderkm]

Definately notice a coordination of shed cycles but have always attributed it to our maintenance and feeding cycles being similar for animals that are the same age. Another thing we noticed this year was that sheds right out of brumation tended to be very fragmented rather than the complete sheds we get most of the time - wondered at the time if it might be an evolutionary advantage to leave scattered bits of shed about to 'advertise' in the spring. Of course it could also be related to the long period of dormant time without shedding.

Interesting how some females would respond with a male present and others won't. Our cal king was housed right next to males for several years and never cycled or laid until the year after we brumated her. The first corn was just one of a couple pets and we had never brumated anything.

So much to try and figure out and impossible to draw any conclusions with so few animals in an individual collection - but always fun to speculate.

mary v.