• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Groan......

Had two more clutches dropped today. Only one infertile egg between the two. But she gave 23 good ones, so I guess she figures she did enough.

LOTS of females going through the pre-egg-laying shed right now. Put egg laying boxes in 15 females who has shed 5 and 6 days ago.

I've put in males with every eligible female now. Might have missed the cycle on a few of them as they look pretty swelled up even before being with a male. Oh well.... I just couldn't move fast enough, I guess. Need to throw males in with a few holdout females later on, but that's going to get tough to do with all the time being taken up setting up egg laying boxes and setting up clutches that have just been dropped.

Should be a pretty decent year with babies..... Guess I should be thinking about my 2009 price list so I can start selling some of them, eh?
 
With the economy being what it is, I am very interested to see how breeders, especially professional breeders respond. Big sales and great deals might be the theme!
 
Been setting up between 15 and 20 egg laying containers per day now. Connie pulled out pre-egglaying sheds out of 40 cages last night. Since I set them up with egg laying containers 5 days after that shed, Thursday is going to be pretty busy. Most are laying between 7 and 8 days after the shed. Fertility is still being phenomenally good this year. I know I am taunting Murphy's Law saying that................. :punch:

I got all eligible females exposed to at least one male. Had a few reject the first suitors who would likely mate if offered a male again, but I just may not get to that again. Had one female drop infertiles a few days after being exposed to a male for the first time, so obviously I missed that one. Probably going to be a few more that will happen to. Just had too many females and not enough time to play matchmaker with them all.

Anyway, sorry about emails and PMs that haven't been responded to. Got a lot of irons in the fire right now. Just got my taxes done on Friday. Just need to double check it, print it, write out that big check, cry about writing that big check, then mail it off.

Hopefully things will start to let up by mid May when the egg laying should be over with.
 
Rich, we all aim to get to your level. Then we read a thread like this and realise it's not all beer and skittles.....
When it's all over and you get a chance to put your feet up, have a long cool one and enjoy the sunset.....
As next season will be on us before you know it...
Best of luck with them, mate.
 
snakewispera snr said:
Rich, we all aim to get to your level. Then we read a thread like this and realise it's not all beer and skittles.....
When it's all over and you get a chance to put your feet up, have a long cool one and enjoy the sunset.....
As next season will be on us before you know it...
Best of luck with them, mate.
Click to expand...

For those of you hoping to get to "my level", a suggestion. Make certain that your spouse is not just supportive, but will be in the trenches with you 100 percent. Otherwise you will likely fail. I could never have done this without Connie's help.
 
247 clutches of eggs so far. 3,494 good eggs laid. As of last night. With more to come..... Fertility is running at 92 percent. Some of those younger males and females killed my statistics. Fertility from the older animals has been VERY good this year. I KNOW not to rely on young males, but I had some that I just WANTED to use this year to get the best possible results. For instance, I have a couple of Amelanistic Okeetee males that came out of Hypomelanistic Okeetees that I REALLY wanted to breed to some Ultramels that are also homozygous for Hypomelanism. Alas, just wasn't meant to be this year. But on the upside, my four young adult Sunkissed Lavenders have done their job and I should have quite a few of them this year.

But anyway, the efforts I made to insure fertility in the older females may have killed my chances with the younger ones. By the time I got to those racks, many were obviously on the down slope of the cycle. So breeding was just too late for them. Some went into what would have been their pre egglaying shed just a few days after mating, so I believe that was just too late to get the eggs fertilized. Never pushed it that close before, so I'm just not sure what to expect. So far, the results have been mixed. They may cycle through again and utilize retained sperm, but I'm not counting on that. Still, I'm figuring on around 5,000 or so babies this year, so that will be quite enough, thank you.

Passed the peak on the egg laying season and heading into the lull before egg hatching commences. With hatching beginning around the second week of June, I'll get a month off with some relative free time. So what am I planning on doing during this free time? Well maybe upgrading the server. Boy, I sure know how to have FUN, don't I? :punch:
 
Last edited:
Sounds like you sure are having fun there!!

got lots of cool new stuff to taunt us with this year?

Plenty of eggs there...
 
Rich Z said:
With hatching beginning around the second week of June, I'll get a month off with some relative free time. So what am I planning on doing during this free time? Well maybe upgrading the server. Boy, I sure know how to have FUN, don't I? :punch:
Click to expand...

How about the 2009 pricelist...........;)

Walter,
:crazy02: BOUT' CORNS !!
 
Hi Rich, I was reading the post where you said on some of the females you missed their cycle or they were already ovulating when put with a male here is the quote
Might have missed the cycle on a few of them as they look pretty swelled up even before being with a male. Oh well.... I just couldn't move fast enough, I guess.
Click to expand...
I was wondering in your experience do these females usually just reabsorb the eggs? I think two of my four pairings this year happened this way. I'm wondering if I missed the boat.
Wow 247 clutches I can't even begin to fathom how much work that must be!
 
Well, Dave Barker had an interesting talk about this "reabsorption" thing many years ago. He seemed to feel that snakes could NOT reabsorb those nonfertilized eggs. Some of mine are just throwing slugs, but others are not, so I'm not sure exactly what is going on. Personally I would not like to see the females waste their bodily resources in throwing nonfertile eggs, but I don't know of any way to control that.

Sometimes I wish I still had my coastal plain milk snakes. They used to really like eating those nonfertile corn snake eggs..... So at least they didn't go completely to waste.
 
I have often thought that having a couple (or more) of pairs of big, red tegus would be a good waste recycling system for infertile eggs and uneaten mice. Could be a good symbiotic relationship to raising snakes! Monitors would work, too.
 
Well, I've just been dumping all that stuff into the "scum buckets" and them dumping that in the bamboo groves, so it doesn't really go to waste. I'm sure animals dig through it all and eat whatever strikes their fancy. Plus it attracts bugs, which starts up it's own little food chain.

But over the years, from dumping all the mouse shavings as compost as well, I guess I've been pretty darn surprised that I have NEVER found any snakes around the mouse compost at all. Matter of fact, the closest I ever got to seeing something like that was when I saw a box turtle (of all things) eating a dead mouse.

Some of the bamboo groves are getting very impressive looking, however, so a lot of that does go directly into the soil. Now if I could just keep on top of the squirrel population to keep them from killing the new shoots when they come up..... But they know my weakness and exploit it to the fullest. They come out early in the morning.... I'm a late night person, so mornings are just my Achilles heel. One of them did make the fatal mistake of barking outside the bedroom window this morning around 8:30 am. Turned out to be fatal for two other of his friends as well who were kicking up a fuss about something. I used to really like having squirrels around, but once they started messing with my bamboo, well.... :madeuce:
 
Goodness, most folks around here would be delighted if squirrels kept the bamboo from spreading! It's generally regarded as a pest plant here. Seems a few people tried to grow it and it got away. Doesn't compare to kudzu - but then, what does? Ah well, I like bamboo.
 
Get yourself a rat terrier or Jack Russel to guard your bamboo. They LOVE going after squirrels and have the energy to do it 24 hours a day!
 
Susan said:
Get yourself a rat terrier or Jack Russel to guard your bamboo. They LOVE going after squirrels and have the energy to do it 24 hours a day!
Click to expand...

Heck no. Honestly I have NO intention of having yet another animal around here that I have to take care of. Besides, those bamboo groves are quite a distance from the house, so most dogs I have seen seem content to just laze around on the porch, and in this case would not be helpful at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top