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Please help! very small egg

rosecat

rosecat

New member
I just went into to check on the snakes and to get a pair to put them together... I looked in the female anery mot's viv, and she has an egg ........ it looks like she shed too, but what's got me puzzled is that the egg is about only an inch long ......., she wasn't to happy about me trying to mess around in there

From the eggs i've seen in photos they appear to be much larger than the specimen my anery mot is gaurding. What should I do?

~rosecat
 
i was able to get the anery mot out ... her egg was on the heat tape, here's a few pics, and a comparison for size to a nickel. I also noticed how skinny she is ... she refused her last meal, so I'm going to try to feed her today and hop[efully she'll eat ... I can't tell if there are more eggs in her, if they are they're very small like the one in the picture

Any suggestions?
 

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It kind of looks like a 'slug' was the female with a male before like last year or anything?
I'd give the female a lay box and let her be for a couple of days in case there are more to come. If so what you don't want to be doing is handling her. I could be wrong and that egg be fertile, it just looks too shiny though.
 
I put her with the male in january and again about a week ago ... the other problem is that i have other than a container ... no substrate ... the substrate along with the incubator i made last year is at a friend's that i can't get a hold of

so any suggestions on a substrate i can get relatively fast?
 
so ... i got some spaghnum peat moss and put some of that moistened a little bit into a lay box and put it in with her along with the 1 egg. I've been gone for about 5 hours since then, and just checked on her. She's curled up half buried in the lay box. So hopefully everything will work out. I'll let ya know
 
A two inch layer of damp crumpled up paper towels has worked as an emergency substrate for eggs when I've had unexpected deliveries. Not much good long term as they're a beggar to get to the right "shade" of dampness, but should tide you over.

But that egg looks well-dodgy to me as well. Fingers crossed it's just an early precursor for a healthy clutch.
 
last season she laid a 20 egg clutch that was fertile for her previous owner. And she's been bred for a couple of season & laid sucessfully by them. So i guess we'll see.

When i first saw the egg, I wasn't sure what it was, then i realized its an egg, my first thought is that its a slug, just because I've seen so many pictures on here of freshly laid eggs that are beautiful, and this egg does no justice to those. However Jen has said that she's gotten some really small fertile egg that hatched, so I guess you never know.

~Rosecat
 
It's more the colour and surface appearance that makes me think it's a slug - quite yellowish and waxy-looking.

I've certainly had odd half-sized eggs hatch before, so it must be worth a try in the incubator if you have any hope. Unfortunately, mine have generally resulted in half-sized hatchlings that didn't want to eat.
 
Well now I have at least 6 eggs w/ momma snake in the lay box. How long do I leave her with the box to make sure everything has come out? She's still hanging out in the lay box.

~rosecat
 
Leave her a while, 6 eggs doesn't sound like very many unless it's a small snake. If the temps and humidity are OK in the laybox there is not hurry to get them out and put them in incubator, IMO
 
I just moved her out of the lay box so i could get a better count, there's 14 eggs in there now. I'm waiting on the incubator to arrive (the ups guy missed me today), so hopefully i will be able to be here when it arrives tomorrow
 
In my nicest voice possible, one thing you need to do is just leave the female alone until she's done laying her eggs. You quite possibly have the potential to cause her to egg bound by the continual removing her from the cage and disrupting her process. I know I peek in several times during the day when I know a female is laying eggs, but rarely, rarely ever physically manipulate or move her around. Just a suggestion.

Particular to the eggs, you'll have a better judge of what's going on after they're all laid and can take a pic. I've had fertile eggs the size of large marbles to some just yesterday that are pert near marshmallow size. :shrugs:

D80
 
rosecat said:
I just moved her out of the lay box so i could get a better count, there's 14 eggs in there now.
Click to expand...

I think this is what Drizzt80 was referring to. Once is more than none, which is what he was suggesting (and is generally considered to be) best.
 
rosecat said:
I've only moved the female twice, and its been almost a week since i noticed the first egg ....
Click to expand...
Okay, here's the deal and I'm still using my nice voice. You intentionally bred this girl in January and you didn't have a lay box nor an incubator ready for what should have been expected eggs. She laid an egg, in not ideal conditions (ie. no lay box), and you remove her and attempt to feed her and then rearrange her cage with a lay box then put in. My guess is she probably shed some 7-14 days prior to April 16th (the first day you posted) which is probably at, or around, another 30-40 days after a previous shed which may have been anywhere from 30-40 days after you bred her back in January. Meaning she held the sperm in her until she was ready to fertilize eggs.

Either way, she was with eggs on the 16th (She looked rather small in the picture, but that could have been angle, etc. . . . what was her mass/weight in January when you bred her? just curious) and then got disturbed, handled, stressed etc. Probably caused her to hold onto her eggs for a few more days, or she could have been egg bound. You then physically moved her again on the 21st after finding more eggs. More stress. 2 days later you get 8 more eggs. See the pattern? I get the impression that you are new at this, and I was once as well, but all my data and numbers guesstimating above come from what's in Kathy's book(s) . . . my first statement in this post is what worries me the most . . . you intentionally bred this snake, but weren't prepared with the necessary handling materials (lay box and incubator) which leads me to the question "Did you do your homework first?" I'm sorry that may seem blunt.

I'm actually sorry I didn't see your original post on the 16th as I would have mentioned not handling her then. What's done is done, but you need to be prepared . . . and you need to be prepared for the responses you'll get when asking for advice. 14 eggs is probably all she has to lay at this point, I'd offer her a small hopper and leave her be in the lay box for approximately 7-10 days as she prepares for her post lay shed. Feed her a regular sized meal after that . . . as long as she takes the hopper.

Good luck, and I hope it turns out the best for you. Look at it this way, it's part of the learning experience! :)
D80

PS. I know it can happen normally, but I've only had one female NOT lay all her eggs within a 24 hour period, and she was partially egg bound. :shrugs:
 
Yes, I am a first time breeder ... I guess I was somewhat assuming that I would notice if she had eggs ... this is how it was with my snake I tried to breed last summer and she reabsorbed her eggs. I didn't realize that a smaller snake would show less and that larger snakes tend to show more which was pointed out to me by Dean. I was sort of thinking that she wasn't pregnant, until I found the egg. Also considering my life has been rather insane the past month or two, time has flown rather fast. When I started back in September figuring out how/when I was going to breed the snakes I had things all sorted out as to what I was going to do etc. I wasn't prepared for having 4 breeding pairs, or for the fact that the incubator I had from last summer would still be at my friend house.

She was just under 400g in January, which i was surprised her weight was that high because in comparison with the other female she is petite in size (she is an '03).

Also I wasn't home all weekend so I don't know when the rest of the eggs were laid in relation to the first one. My boyfriend did say he looked (there is a clear front on the viv), and that there was at least 6 eggs he could see.

So I'm learning ... and I'm definitely paying more attention to the other female that was also bred at the same time. She has not had a recent shed, but looks like she might be in blue, and refused her meal tonight. Plus I can see what I believe are eggs (this is the female that reabsorbed last summer).

So I'm guessing that you are suggesting to feed her the hopper in the lay box, is this correct?
 
rosecat said:
She was just under 400g in January, which i was surprised her weight was that high because in comparison with the other female she is petite in size (she is an '03).

She has not had a recent shed, but looks like she might be in blue, and refused her meal tonight. Plus I can see what I believe are eggs (this is the female that reabsorbed last summer).

So I'm guessing that you are suggesting to feed her the hopper in the lay box, is this correct?
Click to expand...
Great to hear on the weight. The pic was deceiving for sure!

Refusing food and going into shed are typically my first indicators (especially timed about 30 +/- days from breeding) that laying is due. I'm pretty anal about record keeping especially with breeding. The lay box typically goes into the cage when they enter that pre-lay shed blue . . . which, due to my record keeping I'm usually expecting anyway BUT there are those girls that will take longer. I have one female that goes way longer every year . . . on everything . . .she's done it 3 years in a row now. :)

Yes, I'd put the hopper directly in the lay box. Even leaving it in there overnight shouldnn't harm anything if she chose not to eat it. At least a few hours before peeking in again. :)

D80

PS. Thanks for (hopefully) understanding that I wasn't trying to be mean!
 
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