Question for you "Experts"

[Gregg]

Perhaps they were born in late August or September?
Perhaps they were runts?
Perhaps they were under fed?
Perhaps they were kept in deli dishes too long?
I have yet to figure this one out.
Perhaps you "Experts" have an answer?

The hardest part is getting this question phrased correctly:

Why is it? Baby snakes, born in the same year, will be the same size when you buy them almost a year later as if you had bought them two months after they were born?

To put it another way: Hypothetically, If you have two snakes born in, say, July/August 2002, and you buy one in Sept. 2002, and you buy the other in April 2003, why has the the one you bought in 2002 doubled in size? And yet, the one bought in April hasn't grown hardly at all?

The same thing happened to me back in 2001/2002, as it has in 2002/2003. I bought some babies in Sept. 2002 and some in March/April 2003. Likewise, I bought babies in Sept. 2003 and just recently. According to the records which were sent along, they all were born near the same time. The purchases were made from 4 nationally known breeders, so it's not a case of one breeder's practices.

Okay, so maybe I'm feeding too much? I doubt it, since I feed once a week only and go up gradually on the size of food they get. By the time I buy new snakes (born in the same year), the ones I've had are eating fuzzies and twice as large. On the other hand, the new snakes will barely be able to eat pinkies.

I've attached a photo, so you can see what I mean. Both snakes were born the same year and around the same month. In short, they're the same age.

I'm not at all worried about this, so calm down. The little snake will catch up to the big one in about six month's time. I just found it fascinating and wondered if there was a logical explanation which escapes me at the moment.

 

[Kat]

I would say the short answer is that the breeders aren't likely feeding them as much/often. When you're a private owner and have only a small number of snakes, you're anxious to get your hatchlings eating larger prey sooner, and more prey more often. Breeders don't have time to pay their hatchlings that much attention.

Atleast that's what my guess is. I'm sure there are other reasons for the size difference, but that's my guess as to what's mainly behind it.

 

[Rich Z]

Walk into any classroom and look at all the kids that are the same age. Are they all the same size? Even in the same family, are all of the brothers and sisters the same height and weight? Two grades later, has anything changed much? Some will have gotten much bigger, yet others not grown much.

Some may be predisposed to be smaller or larger, depending on their ancestry. Same as in people.

Two people can have the same diet and yet one will not seem to get fat and the other will gain weight like crazy. I'm sure we have all seen this in action.

I've had baby snakes that unless you fed them every 4 to 5 days, they would starve to death. Others seemed to gain twice the weight and bulk from everything they ate.

They are all individuals. And it's just individual differences in metabolism and any number of other factors that makes up what we call "life".

 

[Gregg]

Those answers are too simple.

Kat: I'm in no hurry to feed my snakes into the "fat farm." They start out with one pinky every Monday for approximately four or five months, after which they are usually big enough to hold down a fuzzy once a week.

And Rich: I understand what you are saying, but we are not talking about "individual differences in metabolism." Of course there are differences. The differences of which you speak are recognizable. I've noticed a pattern, however, that doesn't quite get addressed by your answer. Something else is at play, since I can almost guarantee you that the 'new' snakes I have recently received will be eating the same size food and be nearly as big as the others within at least three to four months. They just have to catch up first.

Sure, I'm going to have snakes of varying sizes, varying metabolic rates, and varying preferrences to food size. No, what I'm wondering is: "Why are the snakes one buys in spring so small, when one would reasonably expect them to be as big as any of the other snakes one bought previously, which were alleged to have been born on or around the same time?

Let's set aside, for the moment, what you have said, since your explaination deals mostly with outcomes. Let me try to make myself more clear by using examples. In 2001, I bought 9-2001 corn snakes. I got 7 of those in January. By July, they were eating fuzzies. The other 2 were ordered and received in May and were much smaller than the others, but just about the size the others had been when I bought them. I started the new ones out on pinkies, but, by July they were eating fuzzies, as well, and had gained in size to equal their classmates. (Believe me, I keep very good records). The 2001 group exhibit a variation in sizes--now--but each eats as much as the other. In fact, one of the late purchases is large compared to the others. Here, the outcome agrees with what you have said.

In 2002, I bought 7 new babies and received them in September.
In 2003, I ordered 5 more and received them in March. The photographs show the differences in sizes between 4-2002 babies, two received in Sept. and two received in March. I would be willing to bet good money that, were I to order another, two, three, four, or five 2002 babies, that most, if not all, would be small, like neonates.

If I try to re-phrase my question, I get: "Within the framework of variance, which you have termed "life," shouldn't a corn snake, let's say any 2002 snake picked at random, born around the middle of July to the middle of August, grow along a sort of predictable bell curve of rate of growth? And shouldn't that rate of growth be expected to be somewhere near the same for any other given corn snake born at or around that same time?"

Since it has been my experience that this doesn't seem to be the case, until they are put on a weekly regiment of feeding, something else is up. My therory is that they are deliberately kept small by some means. Either because it's cheaper or more convenient to do so.

Well, I was just curious. Like I said, I have nothing about which to worry. I know my little babies will grow into big ol' snakes in no time. I just find it very curious and wanted to know what the experts had to say. I'll continue to ask around and to do my own research.

If anyone else wants to throw in their two cents, please do.

In the meantime, I'll put up one more example.

 

[Gregg]

Dwight Good comes through again!

I asked Dwight what he thought the answer was to my question. Here is what was said:

ME: >> "I have started a discussion on CornsnakeForum.Com ( http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5614 ) concerning my noticing that baby snakes seem to arrive as 'baby snakes,' regardless of when they are purchased. That is to say, the ones that one orders always seem to not have grown as much as those that one has had for a while. Do you have any opinion about this?"

DWIGHT: "Yes, the answer is an easy one. Snakes that are maintenance fed in breeder's collections/colonies tend to be much smaller than those that are privately owned as pet level animals. The animals receive better care when in the hands of an individual in most instances. I read the thread you listed above and agree wholeheartedly with Rich Z's comments as well. Here is an example. Back in July 2002 I hatched a clutch of corn snakes from a normal Motley het snow X snow corn het motley. I ended up with a nice mix of motleys and hets, in various colors. The male that sired the clutch belonged to a friend of mine, so I had planned on splitting the clutch with him. He has a very small collection, and only wanted two snakes from the clutch. He selected a female anery motley and a female snow motley. I kept/sold the rest. Anyway, the point is I kept a few of these back for myself and mine are 15-17 inches long. When I went to my friends house back in February, his two snakes were close to 30" long already! I was flabbergasted as I have been purposely trying to 'power feed' the ones I held back. He feeds his snakes once per week and wasnt trying to raise them up quickly. Does this make sense? Nope, not to me!

Almost anytime you buy snakes from a large scale breeder/dealer you will get smaller than expected babies. Or at least that is how my experience has gone. Here is something to think about:

Let's say a breeder hatches out 1000 baby corns (a good even number, some breeders hatch out 3,4 or even 5 times this many per year). If you feed those 1000 baby corns 2 pinkie mice per week, that adds up to 2000 pinkies per week. Let's assume the babies hatch on July 20th and are fed for the first time on August 1st. There are four weeks in August, so the breeder would (on paper) go through 8000 pinkies the first month. That would cost the breeder $1120 to feed this number of hatchlings based on the www.rodentpro.com pinkie price of 14 cents for 5000+ quanity. For every month the breeder keeps these snakes the expense piles up. In 8 months time, almost $9000 worth of pinkies would have been consumed!!

A person that has 5, 10, or even 15 snakes can not even begin to imagine the work (and expense) involved with maintaining literally thousands of animals. It is most often a struggle just to keep them cleaned and fed. This is where the line is usually drawn between hobby and business. I have over 200 animals right now and I am at my current limit. At this level I can clean, feed, and maintain all of my animals alone. Any more and I would not be able to keep up. As the baby season approaches, I have to continue to thin the herd and also begin to allocate more time so that I can properly care for them all.

The point of all this? A big breeder (I'm not talking about myself here) usually does not have the time or resources to feed and maintain hatchlings like we hobbyists do. The snakes receive better care when in smaller collections as a general rule."



>>>Logical. A 'Good' answer (pun intended).

 

[Susan]

Another thought that may be contributing to the size of hatchlings purchased at different times...

A breeder has hatched out 50 amel motleys within a 30 day period. As an estimated average, 25 of those hatchlings start eating right away while 25 wait awhile longer to start.

Of the first 25 hatchlings, 13 grow a little faster than 12 by the time the breeder is ready to start selling them at 8 weeks of age.
Of the second 25, 13 have started to eat by 4 weeks of age, 6 by 8 weeks of age, and 6 are definate problem feeders. Their size correlates with their feeding record.

The breeder has started to sell the hatchlings. Which ones will be sold first? Naturally, the 13 largest good feeders. Very few breeders will sell ALL their hatchlings within a short time.

As time goes by, the largest hatchlings get sold as the demand requests. By Spring of the next year, the only hatchlings the breeder has left are those that didn't start to eat until they were 8 weeks old, those that ate well but just haven't put on a growth spurt, were sporadic early feeders, or down-right problem feeders. The hatchlings have finally started to eat regularly and the breeder feels confident enough to sell them. However, due to their history, they are still considered small for their age.

 

[Kat]

I think they're all valid points. Also consider that snakes bought in April are more likely to be from second or third clutches than those bought in August. Corns from later clutches haven't had as much time to grow. I certainly don't think it's malicious compliance on the part of the breeder, that they have a slower start than those cared for by a hobbyist.

I guess what it all boils down to, is that it's generally better to buy your corns in the thick of the hatching season (or soon after) than it is to wait until the spring. There are multiple reasons involved, but if you're a keeper with decent knowledge and only a small number of corns to care for, then odds are you'll be able to raise up your hatchlings faster than a breeder who only has time and resources to put in a smaller effort.

-Kat

 

[Rich Z]

I just played around with my spreadsheet of figures from hatching last year (2002), showing the number of hatchlings per day I got. I then figured that if I wanted to feed them on a five day schedule, how many babies would I have when each feeding day rolled around:

July 10 - 204
July 15 - 610
July 20 - 1348
July 25 - 2500
July 30 - 3140
August 4 - 3703
August 9 - 4042

Of course, this is assuming I am ONLY feeding on 1 day of the week, which just can't happen with those numbers. So what it means is that we are feeding EVERY night as many babies as we can just to try to keep up. Remember all the while, babies are hatching out and need to be set up in their deli cups. Then each and every one offered food the night before has to be checked to see if the pinky was eaten or not.

Luckily animals are being shipped out to help reduce the numbers, but this takes it's toll on time as well. SOMEONE has to take those orders pick out the snakes, and pack the boxes. And that is all time that is pulled away from cleaning cages and feeding snakes, so it's not like it is free time found lurking in a corner somewhere. Unfortunately, the world doesn't stop throwing all of the little time vampires at you just because you are busy with baby snakes.

Even with the best of intentions, sometimes the work load just gets too much and we (my wife helps me out tremendously) just can't keep up the pace. So sometimes the feeding schedule will fall back to 6 days.

So let's assume we are busting our butts, keeping up with the 5 day schedule, when *WHAMO*! Expo weekend is next weekend (mid August). That means HUNDREDS of snakes have to be sexed and labeled for the show. We begin packing on Wednesday, which means very little time is left for feeding Wednesday and Thursday. Friday we are driving to the show for setup. And, of course, Saturday and Sunday we are doing the show, getting back home normally around midnight on Sunday night. Several hours are then spent checking on a bunch of egg incubating boxes making sure they are OK and they haven't filled up the water dishes that we put in with them before left for the show with vermiculite or draped the paper towel in it. That normally takes an hour or two, and we are pretty much wiped out by then. I also need to remove all of the spend eggs at this time, because to do otherwise invites a nasty bug problem in very short order.

So it isn't until Monday before the feeding schedule can resume, and even then, it is after putting back all of the animals that didn't sell, so they are in the proper feeding sequence. So right off the bat, the 5 day feeding schedule has been shot all to hell. Even at best case, the snakes that will be fed on Monday will have gone 9 days since the last feeding. But really, most of them will be on 10 or 11 days, because at this point, there are a MESS of baby corn snakes here.

This same exact scenario is played out for each and every show we do, except a few of the shows are much further away from us than Daytona Beach is, and we may be taken out of the feeding loop even more days than the example posted above. For the Mid-Atlantic Show, for instance, we are driving up there on Thursday and Friday, and don't get back home until very late Monday night. So we start packing on Tuesday for the show. That means an easy 7 days that is chopped right out of the feeding schedule.

I don't like it either, but from mid August thru November there are going to be stretches where the baby snakes may go 10 to 12 days between meals. This DEFINITELY affects the growth rate, no two ways about it. But there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. One year I had a part time worker come in and supposedly keep up with feeding the baby snakes, but the number of hours he said he worked and the number of babies that actually got fed just didn't jive, so I dropped that program.

So that's it in a nutshell. I suspect that any other breeders that deal with large numbers of hatchlings and do shows hit up against the same brick wall as we do. Yes, I would like to feed my snakes every 5 days, but it just can't happen that way. And God help us if we decide to take a day or two off to try to preserve our sanity. I have seen it time and time again where taking one day off will put us three days behind schedule.

And just for the record, ALL of the babies, keepers and ones for sale alike, are fed exactly the same. They are kept together in the same racks and fed exactly on the same schedule. The baskets of deli cups will have keepers and animals for sale side by side, and there is absolutely no difference in how they are fed.

I hope this gives a bit of a bird's eye view of what goes on around here with the hatching season. And perhaps answers somewhat the question originally posed here. Babies that are fed periodically on a 10 day schedule are NOT going to grow as quickly as ones that are religiously fed twice a week. Matter of fact, I have seen many instances of where babies that hatch out LATER in the season can be bigger than ones that hatched out at the beginning of the season. If their feeding schedule just happens to fit into the show schedule where they are fed optimally (or as close to it as can be reasonably expected) it will make a substantial difference on how quickly they will grow.

Also, some animals can just handle larger meals than others, and these seem to reach a critical mass where they just begin growing quickly. However, on the other hand, smaller babies may have real trouble surviving the wide gaps in feeding schedules and even though they ARE eating, the schedule is such that they just cannot thrive. Any corn snake that is fed only every 12 days will probably die, even though it feeds every time it is offered food.

I guess I could add a lot more here, but dang, it's 4 am and I did have some other things I wanted to do before I hit the sack.

Anyway, I hope this helped somewhat. Unless you are actually doing this in the quantities we are working with, it's probably a bit difficult to comprehend the workload it involves.

 

[Chip]

one more idea...

I bred a 2000 female last year- she was on the small side, and got only 6 viable eggs. But they were huge! And the babies were big and sturdy. My largest females lay many more eggs than the young ones, but the eggs and hatchlings are distinctly smaller. I'll weigh them this year and report back.
Yeah, my 2002 babies bought from breeders are far smaller than my own 2002 Okeetees, but I chalked part of that up to Okeetees being a big race of corn. Sunglows, motleys, etc, who knows the heritage of them? I have one tiny sunglow that has put on so little weight, (and lots of feeding problems) I considered freezing him, and definitely won't breed him.

 

[Melinie]

Feeding Frenzy

My Goodness, Rich!!!!

I'll bet that brumation time is your favorite time of the year!
Yes, you still have to feed all of the little babies, but at least you get a break from feeding all the adults along with them.

When do you sleep, man?!?

 

[Rich Z]

Hah! Sleep time is around 5 am to 10 or 11, depending on how early the phone rings from some telemarketer.....

Things are pretty hectic now because I have to play corn snake pimp. I counted 445 females eligible to breed this season, and to be honest, I may not get to them all. I like to have a female bred at least twice, preferably with different males that are genetically the same. Figuring on a couple of false starts, you can see where I am having to move around a LOT of animals each day to try to keep everything within this window of opportunity.

The real problem with this business is that NOTHING can be put off if you just don't feel like doing it right now. Breeding season you need to put the animals together. When eggs are dropped, they need to be set up. When they are hatching, you have to set up the babies and start offering them food. And every day, SOMETHING is due to be fed.

Anyone whom would try to do this just for money is nuts.

 

[CAV]

Sounds to me like Rich's next project should be cloning.....

Himself, not the snakes.

 

[Gregg]

I hope this gives a bit of a bird's eye view of what goes on around here with the hatching season. And perhaps answers somewhat the question originally posed here.

Perfectly, I knew it wasn't as simple as you tried to state before.

My theory was:

1) It probably is a simple case of 'maintenance feeding,'
or 2), neonate snakes do remain small if kept in deli dishes over a long period of time.

It has been said that the belief that snakes will remain small if kept in small containers is a fallacy. If that is true demonstrably, then it had to be 'maintenance level feeding.' Your answer, Rich, goes much further in clearing up the question and I thank you for going to the trouble, given your schedule.

 

[Rich Z]

I can tell you for a fact, that snakes will grow at a steady pace, no matter how small the cage is they are in. They will literally bust out the sides. About the only real negative I have seen is that they will tend to get overweight from lack of exercise. This appears to happen much more readily on the males than it does on the females. It manifests itself as fat pockets right above the cloaca on either side of the body.

A few will resent the small cage and need to be moved to a larger one quickly if they begin to damage their rostral area pushing against it, but for the most part, corns are very accomodating and tolerate small cages extremely well. Luckily for me.....

I am in a constant battle trying to keep up with them growing out of their cages. Which is the reason I surplus adults every year. The youngsters have nowhere to go until a larger cage is opened up for them to be moved into. My biggest downfall is trying to keep as many as I do from each season's clutches.