Some fresh info: the female shedded 6/19 and refuses food since 5/26, I'm expecting the litter every other day now. I'm a little worried about that I'm going abroad on wednesday and I'm coming back on 7/14, wouldn't it be a problem for the babies to survive the week without any food?
Thx
1,1 Thamnophis sauritus 1,0 Python regius 1,0 Boa constrictor 1,0 Chalcides ocellatus 1,1 Gekko ulikkovskii and a few spiders
So it came out today, I found a litter of 4 live and 8 dead babies in the tank today in the morning.
Anybody got an idea why there were so much dead and so few live ones?
Anyway, I'm happy that at least the 4 are healthy, I waited so long and worried so much for them.
Thank you guys for advice very much, I appreciate that.
1,1 Thamnophis sauritus 1,0 Python regius 1,0 Boa constrictor 1,0 Chalcides ocellatus 1,1 Gekko ulikkovskii and a few spiders
Hey congrats on the live babies and sorry for the ones that didn't make it. I don't have much experience with garter births, but could you provide a little info on the parents.. such as, How old were the parents? Was this their first litter? And were the parents captive bred or wild caught?
Looks like a bunch of under developed babies. Way to much of the yoke sack is still there.
As to why this happened who really knows. Temps, stress, genetics, age of the snake, etc. are just a few of the possible causes.
As I have told many others...keep watching...it took my female several days to have live babies and several weeks after that to pass all of the stillborns. More could be coming for you. Like others said...it's hard to tell why they have stillborns...it's happened with my female eastern twice. Many members report stillborns along with live young with gravid females. Congrats on the live ones and so sorry about the stillborns.
Edit: looking at the pics, as Steve said...because of the yolk sac being there...it looks like they were underdeveloped. She may have delivered early for some reason. Who knows why this happens. It happens with women all the time. My son came 4 weeks early...but no one knows why...nature has it's own timetable I guess.