The Corn Snake Eggs Are Hatching

When was it, May 27th I think, that my newly acquired Okeetee Female Corn (bred to a reverse Okeetee male corn snake) Snake decided to lay a clutch of eggs rather unexpectedly. I knew she was gravid but figured her for at least another week or two before laying. Luckily, my son, Brendan saw she had laid eggs and we set up an incubator and got the eggs in there quickly. More on all that here.

Tonight, when I got home from work, I checked the incubator, and there were a couple of baby corn snakes atop the medium in the incubation chamber. A little bit of looking inside the container revealed another 4 of them in there. Two are one phase or another of albino and the other 4 are more normal looking. Only time will tell (well a corn snake expert might also be able to tell) how they will turn out as adults. The colors of baby corn snakes can change markedly from when they hatch until they grow into older juvenile snakes by which point they usually have acquired their adult coloration. For now, and until they have their first sloughing (shed), I will keep the baby corn snakes in the incubator where it remains warm and slightly damp. That dampness will help them with the shed. After the shed, I will offer them their first meal of pinkie mice. Hopefully each one will feed right away, again, time will tell. Pics of the baby snakes will be put up in a later post.

You may remember I also had 2 clutches of Hermann's Tortoise eggs in the incubator. I had been doubtful that any would be fertile and I was partially correct. Out of two clutches of 4 eggs each,  only 1 egg from each clutch was fertile. I now have 2 eggs that are fertile. One has a hairline crack about 3/4 the way around the longer part of the oblong egg shape. It is still alive and hopefully doing well. I took a thing strip pf duct tape and put it over the crack, hopefully that will prevent it from cracking any further and will keep out any nasty germs or other things like mould or fungus that would destroy the embryo. The other egg looks good all around. Come mid or late August I should know if the 1 from the first clutch will hatch and the other is due to hatch about 2 weeks after the first one. If I am really lucky, then the female tort will have also laid another clutch somewhere in my backyard and I ill find babies crawling around before they escape the yard. I kind of doubt though that she laid a third clutch.

All the best,
GB