Still Born

[bkhuff1s]

Well like I said before I appreciate your understanding. She ate for the first time in a month today. So that's a move in the right direction. Judging by sizes, next year she will be the only positive breeder, since the other three females I own are at her pre-bred size.

[ConcinusMan]

It could be a lot of factors. Most of which would be out of your control.
These things just happen. I have for many years have been looking for any studies on this phenomenon but as of yet haven't found any.

May or may not be out of anyone's control. You would have to know the cause in order to rule on that but consider this: we are breeding generations and artificially selecting snakes for certain traits. If a snake was that poor at reproducing in the wild, guess what happens? The snakes with those genes and poor reproduction don't survive to pass their genes on. nature doesn't coddle the one or two survivors out a litter of garbage and see to it that they breed in the future, let alone breed the siblings together later, and yet it's common practice with CB morphs.

I've bred wild caught snakes plenty of times, even from the same pair over many years, and never saw a slug. A few stillborns, but never slugs. Heck, I don't even know what they look like. Now just for saying all that, watch my girls all "slug out"

Just saying. I could probably go catch a couple of dozen gravid females right now, and none of them would have such miserable litters and yet it seems all to common around the forum so there has to be something we're doing, that is not happening in nature. Nobody wants to be blamed, but the cause just might be all of us, and everything we do from selective breeding to genetics, to brumating conditions, to husbandry during pregnancy. I never use belly heat for garters, especially preggo one's. The snakes are just stupid enough to lay on hot surfaces and burn themselves, then they're stupid enough to overheat their eggs inside. Bottom heat does have the potential to cause problems. Excessive heat and failure to cool down at night is more likely to cause reproductive failure than temperatures that are too cool.

I don't want everybody getting all defensive and calling hogwash and getting ticked off at me. Just trying throw out some ideas that nobody seems to even consider. I can't prove any of this but there is a lot of slugs and poor litters with some morphs, and CB snakes (generations far removed from the wild and selected) in general it seems and you also can't prove that some of the things I said are NOT a contributing factor.

With all that said, I'm sorry it didn't work out and like Steve said, there's likely nothing you specifically did wrong. There's too many factors that alone, or in combination, that can cause this. It sounds like she'll be passing decomposing babies for a while so brace yourself for that. She could just turn right around and give a nice big healthy litter next year.

[Hollis_Steed]

May or may not be out of anyone's control. You would have to know the cause in order to rule on that but consider this: we are breeding generations and artificially selecting snakes for certain traits. If a snake was that poor at reproducing in the wild, guess what happens? The snakes with those genes and poor reproduction don't survive to pass their genes on. nature doesn't coddle the one or two survivors out a litter of garbage and see to it that they breed in the future, let alone breed the siblings together later, and yet it's common practice with CB morphs.

I've bred wild caught snakes plenty of times, even from the same pair over many years, and never saw a slug. A few stillborns, but never slugs. Heck, I don't even know what they look like. Now just for saying all that, watch my girls all "slug out"

Just saying. I could probably go catch a couple of dozen gravid females right now, and none of them would have such miserable litters and yet it seems all to common around the forum so there has to be something we're doing, that is not happening in nature. Nobody wants to be blamed, but the cause just might be all of us, and everything we do from selective breeding to genetics, to brumating conditions, to husbandry during pregnancy. I never use belly heat for garters, especially preggo one's. The snakes are just stupid enough to lay on hot surfaces and burn themselves, then they're stupid enough to overheat their eggs inside. Bottom heat does have the potential to cause problems. Excessive heat and failure to cool down at night is more likely to cause reproductive failure than temperatures that are too cool.

I don't want everybody getting all defensive and calling hogwash and getting ticked off at me. Just trying throw out some ideas that nobody seems to even consider. I can't prove any of this but there is a lot of slugs and poor litters with some morphs, and CB snakes (generations far removed from the wild and selected) in general it seems and you also can't prove that some of the things I said are NOT a contributing factor.

With all that said, I'm sorry it didn't work out and like Steve said, there's likely nothing you specifically did wrong. There's too many factors that alone, or in combination, that can cause this. It sounds like she'll be passing decomposing babies for a while so brace yourself for that. She could just turn right around and give a nice big healthy litter next year.

I for one think you're probably getting darn close to some real truth here. Makes sense to think that with all of the jelly beans, slugs, birth defects, and the like, which most of the breeders of cb garters seem to see quite a bit of, it is reasonable to think we might not know as much as Mother Nature. The close inbreeding for certain desirable traits coupled with the "unnatural" conditions that our snakes are living under must certainly increase, or at least contribute to the "unnatural" offspring that we see.
Like I said, I think you're on to something here!

[ConcinusMan]

Well thanks. Seems that everyone else, especially the leading breeders of new morphs, get defensive if I even mention it and bombard me with other possible causes. I keep hearing people saying T.s. concinnus have small litters but that's coming from concinnus that are many generations removed (and even possibly at some point even possibly got crossed with infernalis)

I've never had less than 23 offspring, and even once had 54, coming from WC (but captive bred) parents, brumated for 4 months at 45-50 degrees F so I don't know what to say about their small litters.

[bkhuff1s]

These two out of my collection are WC, and unrelated. I'm wondering if heat was the problem