Unnecessarily Graphic Egg-Laying Pics

[MouseKilla]

Here's a picture of the clutch in the incubator. I'm very reluctant to disturb them at all so that makes them hard to count. Any guesses?



Looks like 15 or so including 3 obvious slugs and a couple that I'm not sure about. Any opinions based on experience would be appreciated.

[gonesnakee]

I'd say 12 + 3 slugs unless theres a 13th good one hiding underneath. The slugs can be removed quite easily usually also. After the first week they will usually pull right off quite easily & be disguarded. Just be gentle. Don't risk the good eggs if they want to stay stuck. Sometimes the slugs will get real nasty though & its better IMHO to remove them if you can. Don't need nasty mold etc. growing right beside your good eggs if it can be avoided. Sometimes they just shrivel up & don't get nasty, but I always remove them if I can. From how they look I'd say 2/3 slugs will come off real easy & the 3rd should with a little help. Good Luck Mark
P.S. the ones you are not sure about you will be able to tell as time progresses. If they start to go nasty they are probably bad, but don't remove them unless you are sure as babies can come from some real nasty eggs sometimes. Bad eggs won't usualy make good eggs go bad either.

[Linds]

That's totally cool that not only she is your first, but you got to catch her in the act as well! Best of luck!

[MouseKilla]

Thanks Linds, I was lucky enough to be home that day and when I'm around the house I spend a lot of time (some say too much time) in the snake room. She was driving me nuts for a couple of days making all kinds of noise customizing her nest and tricking me into thinking she was laying. When it was finally happening for real I had my wife making fun of me for being so excited. lol!

Mark,

I tried giving the slugs a little wiggle but they seem pretty firmly stuck and I'm not about to get rough with them. I have a long history of breaking nearly everything I lay my hands on so I'm thinking I should just stay far away from the eggs. If bad eggs don't usually harm the good ones they're probably less of a threat to my future snakes than my clumsy meat hooks. lol!

[Hurley]

I just happened to catch one in the act this year, too. Made a little gif of the event.