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Cutting eggs.. Why we do it.. Sad pics attached.

snakewispera snr

snakewispera snr

The Devils Advocate
Sometimes healthy snakes can't get out of the egg, just by a quirk of fate..
If we had cut a window in this egg, we could of seen the problem and helped..
This wasn't a weak snake, it done all the hard work and nearly made it out..

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Last year I had the majority of a clutch go DIE on me. I could never figure out why. The first few in the clutch started pippin and everything seemed to be going well, but when almost a week went by and the rest of the clutch hadn't done anything, I decided to cut. Found the snakes inside had begun dying. For now on I'm going to slit if they don't all pip within the first 24 hours of so after the first one.

Nice pics Mike and thanks for the lesson.

Wayne
 
No cutting here. If they are truly healthy and strong, they will come out of the egg. I've seen people slit eggs and the snakes that have come out should have died right where they were. Organs on the outside of the body, huge kinks....You may not see what is wrong with the snake-could be an internal issue, but helping a snake hatch when it shouldn't is going against nature. Just like forcefeeding a baby that won't eat, it's just not right.
 
Indeed it is, but we don't need to "help" weak animals into the world. That is counterproductive. You have NO idea if that animal would have been strong or not. It's quite possible that there were subtle problems due to the wrapping that affected it's brain development or other things in the body. I had a chondro baby come out of the egg partway and then die. It had the cord wrapped around the lower half of the body. It came out but couldn't survive. That's the way life is. As breeders though, we have a responsibility to perpetuate the strongest and best of the species. Helping potentially weak babies out of the egg doesn't do that. FWIW: My animals are kept in naturalistic cages with live plants, earth and real wood branches. I believe that we need to do the most we can to help make their captive lives as natural as possible.
 
It drowned. It was trying to breath but the chord stopped it from lifting it's head out. If we had of hooked it out I'm sure it would of been alright.
 
Usually we cut eggs after the first egg pips, then we do a small window on all of the others. Most of them are out within a few days. Usually we cut at day 55 or so. If a snake is destined to die, it will die after it comes out of the egg. I mean you can make a nice natural viv, but in the end, you are controlling everything the snake does, so how is that natural? Great post, Mike! I've been considering picking up a pair of Bredli!
 
MegF. said:
No cutting here. If they are truly healthy and strong, they will come out of the egg. I've seen people slit eggs and the snakes that have come out should have died right where they were. Organs on the outside of the body, huge kinks....You may not see what is wrong with the snake-could be an internal issue, but helping a snake hatch when it shouldn't is going against nature. Just like forcefeeding a baby that won't eat, it's just not right.
Click to expand...

Keeping them in cages. Unnatural.
Forced breedings. Unnatural.
Artificial incubation. Unnatural.
But heaven forbid you help the babies who you forced in to existence! Way to go.
 
Don't agree...so we'll have to agree to disagree. We do produce unatural conditions and as such are responsible for the eggs or babies we produce...however, we still have a responsibility to make the animals as strong as we can. I do not force a breeding. Animals only breed if they are interested. I produce conditions similar to their natural breeding conditions and if they breed, they breed. I can tell you I have a lot of chondros who aren't interested in the male or female they are with and WON'T breed. Can't make them, they either will or won't. I don't have to use artificial incubation...mom would do just fine, but because I value my females, I choose to take the eggs and incubate. It's better for her. She'll live longer for it. I do not force the babies into existance either. They either hatch or they don't. No forcing...cutting the egg is forcing...you create a stressor by opening the egg earlier than the baby would normally do...this can cause them to exit early. I've had losses in the egg where the babies have never tried pipping at all...they just died...I've had some pip the egg and then die getting out. They usually had something terribly wrong with them. I've watched the "egg cam" as cut eggs hatched out abominations that surely would have never breathed air if nature had been left to it's course...instead the owner had to kill the baby to avoid further suffering. They couldn't have come out on their own if they wanted to, but cutting a window in the egg let them lay out in the air and continue their pitiful existance. I've had healthy babies hatch out as long as a week after their siblings...they just weren't ready to hatch. Boas...hell, you can't pip those...they are either born alive or they aren't...how do you propose to "fix" that? We have to try to be as natural as possible with an unnatural situation. If we go on about caging being unatural, then I guess we'd never keep. I attempt to house mine as naturally as possible. If I had some way of housing them outdoors I'd do it!
 
snakewispera snr said:
It drowned. It was trying to breath but the chord stopped it from lifting it's head out. If we had of hooked it out I'm sure it would of been alright.
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What a shame, especially since a few people say it shouldn't have hatched anyway. :/ A perfectly good pet wasted.

Carinata said:
If a snake is destined to die, it will die after it comes out of the egg. I mean you can make a nice natural viv, but in the end, you are controlling everything the snake does, so how is that natural? Great post, Mike! I've been considering picking up a pair of Bredli!
Click to expand...

Couldn't have said it better myself!

fyrefocks said:
Keeping them in cages (no matter how "natural" you make it). Unnatural.
Forced breedings. Unnatural.
Artificial incubation. Unnatural.
But heaven forbid you help the babies who you forced in to existence! Way to go.
Click to expand...

Bahahahaa! Exactly!

MegF. said:
I do not force the babies into existance either.
Click to expand...

Actually, yes, you did force them to exist, even if they don't hatch, because you had the parents mate, even if you didn't forcibly make them mate.
 
Perhaps, but I'm still not forcing them into existance. They hatch or they don't. They breed or they don't. In the wild, if they came upon each other with conditions the same, they would breed...or they wouldn't. We could argue this to infinitum and it won't change people's minds. They will either cut eggs or they won't. I don't, you can. That's just the way I do things.
 
You are keeping snakes that aren't native to Aiken, South Carolina in Aiken, South Carolina? Would the snakes choose to live in a house, in a glass box. They wouldn't choose to eat frozen thawed mice?
 
Snakes aren t intelligent enough to choose or know. they work on instincts. Keeping them in glass boxes isn't unnatural IMO. They would choose to live there if the condidions were right and better than the surrounding temps etc.

All a snake wants to do is eat and survive. We give them both.
 
My cages aren't glass boxes, they are large melamine cages with only one side open for viewing....less stress to the animals that way I feel. They also either have natural earth or sphagnum moss as substrate with live plants, full spectrum lights and heat panels. I would suspect that rather than be out in the SC weather, a controlled system with proper temps and food available more readily is better. They certainly live longer in captivity. As far as f/t.....they would take live...however, I value their health enough not to feed that and they don't have a clue the animal is already dead...trust me...it goes in on tongs hot, and they nail it and constrict it.....they don't care. In the meantime, I don't have missing eyes, scars and possibly terminal injuries, nor do I have the parasites that live prey can carry. This is true of even my snail eaters. They eat f/t slugs...they don't care.
 
They don't care if they eat F/T, so they should care that they're being cut out of an egg! "Oh no, some person is bringing me into this world, where I'll be fed and waited on hand and foot, even though I don't have any"
 
They don't have any idea they are coming out in the world to food and care...their instincts tell them a predator is breaking into the egg and they need to exit it or die.....that has nothing to do with anything....that's like saying they are born not fearing people because they were cbb...they are wild animals...doing wild animal stuff. LOL on the hand and foot....took me a minute to figure out what you meant :)
 
Meg I have to disagree a bit.
It is indeed a good question, generally- are we in fact weakening the animals we are producing by selective breeding? The answer, I imagine, is definitely. I think that cutting an egg is just throwing a match into an already existing inferno.
Morphs are not really a natural occurrence- they happen, but few make it to adulthood... let alone multiple morphs in one snake...
Beyond that, most snakes in captivity don't have to deal with quite as may parasites, they eat f/t, we decide on pairings based on personal preference and not natural selection...
In short, the animals are already not good representatives of their wild counterparts- they are hatched to be pets, and there’s nothing wrong with assisting another one into the world.
Also… say you see someone about to die- you can stop it, but that person may be on his way to kill a child. There are always question marks… my personal belief is that if we are capable of helping, we should do so.
 
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