bummed

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I keep seeing posts in which experienced keepers are getting all sorts of weird deaths. WTH? I've been lucky I guess. I lose a couple of babies every batch,(perhaps 3/25-50) but they usually die within 7-10 days of birth, or refuse to ever take their first meal within a month or so and die. Then after losing 1 or 2 of the smallest ones during their first winter rest, the remaining are always still doing well a year later in any case, but nope. No weird diseases or infections. If husbandry is not the issue I wonder if perhaps captive breeding is making some species more vulnerable to disease. I mean, many generations of captive breeding later, I'm seeing some snakes (not garters) where if 1/4 survive the first year under the best care, it's considered good.

Some keepers could possibly have something in their collections that they don't know about and it may claim a few of their young animals every now and then and they may think nothing of it, seeing as part of the failure to thrive thing that happens with some babies every now and then. I have 3 or 4 of deaths over the course of my 7 years of snake-having that I would not even be able to begin to explain. Only one of them though, was a snake I actually raised from a baby, and did not get elsewhere when it was already at least partially grown. and that was my beloved female graybanded kingsnake. She reached sexual maturity after a few years of tender loving care, I coupled her with a male and a week or two later, I found her curled up perfectly under her hide, but dead. You want to talk about heartbroken?! I had no idea she was even dead until I touched her to pick her up, she was stiff! If I have a death I usually will see it coming, either with a baby that refuses food from the start, or only eats enough to get by. Or in the very few times I have had a snake get sick, and taken to the vet, sometimes they simply did not respond to treatment. Rhea's male fitchii that passed away had only been in her care for a week or so, so it's really tough to say what would have caused it. I also had a freak event where I had a huge litter of easterns born from a rescued mama. out of 50, 16 were stillborn. I turned mama and her offspring loose down by the creek as soon as they were born. and held onto 5 or 6 that I thought were neat with nice red for kicks. Within 2 weeks, all of them were dead, even though they had begun eating on my standard food items immediately.

[ConcinusMan]

Thanks for the input. It's helping me to see a bigger picture.

I once collected a gravid female concinnus from one of my local hotspots for large specimins. It was really a bit early in the spring/season for them to be out and about, but they were forced from their dens early by a severe rise in the water table and were really easy to find since they were concentrated on higher ground.(Spring 1997, after the infamous FEB 1996 WA floods)

Apparently, this female had retained her young through the winter, and gave birth in spring of 1997. She looked to be very old(although not more than 2/3 maximum size for her species) and not very healthy.

She gave birth to 18 stillborns. Some of them were clearly decayed. She died several days later. It was a harshly cold winter followed by extreme flooding though.