Greg's fun palace!

[gregmonsta]

Okies ... summary as promised.

Not the best summary for this one. Born yesterday, 06/05/13

70 days from lock to babies, 24 babies in total - 10 of these were either stillborn or had to be euthanised.

Weight after brumation 11/02 - 161g
before delivery 18/04 - 196g

From the 14 that remain two are special and being kept to see how they get on (1 dwarf and 1 with only one eye). The stillborn/euthanised snakes varied greatly. There were some kinked, some with deformed heads, another one-eyed individual, another dwarf and also one live snake that was born with its heart and some other organs outside of the body cavity. I shot some video of this that I'll post in a comprehensive post later in the month.

The only thing that seems to explain this phenomena at the moment is that the litter was too large for this little girl. She managed 16 for Sjoerd last year and I can't say that she has grown any since I took charge of her. I was pretty amazed that 24 babies had been squeezed out of her.

Anyway, the rest seem perfectly normal and about 80% ate today, their first offer of food.





It also seems likely that the next litter will come from Fawn, my other parietalis as yesterday I found a stillborn in her viv. Nothing has been found since but this seems to have been an early jettison of a possibly over-developed baby. Stretched out fully this stillborn was almost 9 inches long!!!



Anyway, to make up for some of the baby gloom here's some baby cuteness overload:





The first parietalis group are doing fantastically!!! All are feeding and all are full of confidence. Love these squigglies!

[guidofatherof5]

Sorry to hear about the losses. Any chance you can post a photo of the one-eyed scrub?
A 35g gain isn't very much. I find it extraordinary she had so many babies.
How's mum doing?

[gregmonsta]

Sorry to hear about the losses. Any chance you can post a photo of the one-eyed scrub?
A 35g gain isn't very much. I find it extraordinary she had so many babies.
How's mum doing?

I will once I get the chance . Mum's doing fine and is looking slim. She was straight onto food the same evening and doesn't seemed too stressed by the experience.

[guidofatherof5]

Great news. Sounds like she's a good strong breeder. She'll probably do much better in the future.
Looking forward to the photo.

[gregmonsta]

Did a few thingies today. Feeding the wee monsters has been going well. I think there's only 1 parietalis yet to take food and only 3 of the radix. The infernalis have been split into smaller groups and the non-feeders, 6 of them have been separated out for extra attention. Within 5 minutes one of these decided that worm was worth the effort though ... so only the other 5 to convince now ....

Still waiting on Fawn, Jaffa and Beena to offload ...

[chris-uk]

I'm shocked to hear that you still have infernalis not feeding... Little demon snakes when they smell food.

[gregmonsta]

I'm shocked to hear that you still have infernalis not feeding... Little demon snakes when they smell food.

The feeders are true monsters . I have to be very much on my toes to feed those groups.

All of the 'feeders' progressed to 'fish only' from 'worms n fish today'. . Non-feeder list is still 5 infernalis, 1 parietalis but only 1 radix now (the dwarf).

Special little story for today - One of my students approached me about a month back about whether a snake would be a suitable thing for her son. He's 7 years old and I mulled it over for a little while. He has his mother's full support so I started coaching her on snake care and got the bits and pieces together.
They came to visit. Now, this was simply a visit to a cool place as far as the son was concerned. He's snake made and made a good job of interacting with the adults. Then I tested his interaction with one of the babies. Also very encouraging.
Well yesterday I dropped of a fully equipped viv at their flat when he wasn't there and today the most confident parietalis male of the litter went to make this young man happy. We fed it together after a short handling session and I left the family glued to the enclosure after a little chat.
It makes me remember that I started to go snake daft around that time in my life ... although my mother always said 'no' to my yearly request of a snake for my birthday

[gregmonsta]

Two interesting things to report:

1) I spotted something squiggling behind the glass in the radix enclosure. The usual shout of 'babies' was called for, expecting Jaffa to be in delivery mode. But, all that was found was this one baby ... it is also tiny and comparable to the dwarf in Cardboard's litter. I suspect this is actually number 25 of the latter.

2) Fawn appears to be in delivery proper. Things are not looking good so far though - 1.5 massive babies delivered, the complete one over 9 inches long. Decay evident at umbilacle in both cases (like in the stillborn delivered earlier). I'm still crossing my fingers for the rest of the litter but I have a feeling I will be seeing more of the same, with the meds administered during the op to fix her tail ( http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/urge...tail-loss.html ) being to blame!!!

[guidofatherof5]

Sorry to here about Fawn's troubles. How's her attitude and behavior?

[gregmonsta]

Sorry to here about Fawn's troubles. How's her attitude and behavior?

Happy to say she's acting normal so far. Will be keeping a close eye on her. Nothing else to report so far unfortunately. The contractions I saw earlier haven't continued. There was a 6 day gap between the first stillborn and today's offerings.