Bamboo Rat Snake subspecies cross?

AlyssaM · 09-25-15, 10:37 AM

Hello all, I bought a pair of Broad Banded Bamboo Rat Snakes (Oreocryptophis porphyraceus laticinctus) about a year ago. I bred them this spring, and they had two eggs. On went bad right away, the second was mostly collapsed the whole time during incubation despite high humidity. It continued to develop anyway but the hatch date passed and it began to deteriorate more so I opened it up to see the dead fetus. However from the markings, it does not look like a laticinctus baby, which are supposed to have wide yellow bands, not black. I think it looks closest to pulchra. Now unless the baby would have developed yellow instead of black before it hatched, it seems to me they are crosses, or at least not what I thought they were.
So any insight to what is going on? The best I have is that the parents are maybe laticinctus x pulchra but do not have physical features of pulchra? I have attached a photo of the mother and the fetus, I don't have pics of the male on hand but I can get some, he looks the same as the female though.

**Aaron_S** · 09-25-15, 12:18 PM

I can't really answer your question directly as I have no experience with these species currently.

What I can suggest is go back to the person you bought the parents from and see if there's any lineage you can get. See if you track when and who bred them.

The other part is when breeding animals really funky things happen in the eggs until the animal is ready to hatch. We get lots of odd patterns and colours and incubation temp can be the cause of these things.

I personally wouldn't panick yet as the baby could not have had it's full colouring yet when it died. Odd that it's black BUT not completely out of the realm of possible.

AlyssaM · 09-28-15, 08:32 AM

Thanks, hopefully someone with experience with these can chime in. I was thinking she would have more than one clutch as it's normal for them to have 2-3 but doesn't look like there will be. Might have to wait for next year to have answers.

**Pareeeee** · 10-04-15, 02:50 PM

Charis might be able to help, she owns O. p. coxi bamboo rat snakes.

Charis · 10-04-15, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aaron_S

I can't really answer your question directly as I have no experience with these species currently.

What I can suggest is go back to the person you bought the parents from and see if there's any lineage you can get. See if you track when and who bred them.

The other part is when breeding animals really funky things happen in the eggs until the animal is ready to hatch. We get lots of odd patterns and colours and incubation temp can be the cause of these things.

I personally wouldn't panick yet as the baby could not have had it's full colouring yet when it died. Odd that it's black BUT not completely out of the realm of possible.

This ^ about sums up what I'm thinking. Full pigmentation doesn't happen in the embryo until the day they hatch, though they might have most of it within about 7 days of being ready to hatch, at least within my admittedly limited experience with DIE babies of all species. So I'd say it's most likely that the pigment just hadn't come in yet or considering something was apparently off with it from nearly day one, maybe that contributed to not forming the right patterns/pigments in the developing embryo too.

It's also possible the parents could be crosses but I'm also not seeing any obvious pulchra features to the dam.

AlyssaM · 10-05-15, 02:16 PM

Alright thanks guys, I guess I will just have to try again next year and hopefully will get better results!

AlyssaM · 10-19-15, 07:37 AM

Might get a second chance to see some babies after all! She laid another 4 this weekend. This was 88 days after her first lay. Does that seem abnormally long for anyone? I thought she was done since so much time had passed. Fingers crossed