Holiday snake(s)

[gregmonsta]

Well, no pics yet but the little one has been eating like clockwork. Went straight onto fish without a second thought.

As it stands there were 3 stillborns and lots of slugs. The worrying thing is that mum is still heavy and still producing the occaisional slug. A bit like last year when she was passing slugs over a period of a couple of months.

[chris-uk]

Good to know that the little one is eating well. As for the mother, do you think that she's just not cut out for reproducing?

[ConcinusMan]

The only way to determine that is to breed her with different males and see if the outcome changes. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with the male, or her, but that they just can't reproduce well together. The male might do just fine with a different female, and the female might do just fine with a different male.

If she does this regardless, I would say there's something wrong with her lady parts. That has been known to happen. If that's the case, breeding her is risky to her health.

[gregmonsta]

Well, the little one, despite having been an avid feeder, was unfortunately found dead two days ago .

My overall evaluation is as follows:

• The litter was premature. She wasn't expected to drop anything until now. Several of the slugs contained 'mini-snakes' and 'Snakus Christ' was very much on the small side too.
• The litter seemed to have two distinct stages of development. The earlier stillborn passed, were normal sized and well developed. Later stillborn were as described above.
• The above points could indicate: 1) Some fully formed babies, though dead, were retained from last year and spoiled the litter. or 2) She had started to produce a new litter prior to he male being introduced (she was acting 'horny' at the time) and fertilisation somehow occurred in two 'stages'.

Other things are probably possible. I'll be leaving her out of breeding until 2014 to see if anything else crops up. Her sister is attempting a litter using retained sperm, but she has been a point of confusion as I was expecting to see something from her around December. And no .... I definitely didn't get them mixed up ... it's all a bit backwards with these 2.

[chris-uk]

2) She had started to produce a new litter prior to he male being introduced (she was acting 'horny' at the time) and fertilisation somehow occurred in two 'stages'.

The little one had the odds stacked against him coming from an odd litter like this you never know what impact it had on his health.

I wouldn't have thought she would have been fertile to enable two fertilisations. The reproductive system (I'm basing this on mammalian reproduction, but reptiles have similar endocrinology) should produce hormones that will prevent the female producing fertile eggs once she's carrying fertilised eggs. That isn't to say that something could have gone wrong with the hormone levels, but it would seem less likely than other explanations.

[ConcinusMan]

Well, the little one, despite having been an avid feeder, was unfortunately found dead two days ago .

My overall evaluation is as follows:

• The litter was premature. She wasn't expected to drop anything until now. Several of the slugs contained 'mini-snakes' and 'Snakus Christ' was very much on the small side too.
• The litter seemed to have two distinct stages of development. The earlier stillborn passed, were normal sized and well developed. Later stillborn were as described above.
• The above points could indicate: 1) Some fully formed babies, though dead, were retained from last year and spoiled the litter. or 2) She had started to produce a new litter prior to he male being introduced (she was acting 'horny' at the time) and fertilisation somehow occurred in two 'stages'.

Other things are probably possible. I'll be leaving her out of breeding until 2014 to see if anything else crops up. Her sister is attempting a litter using retained sperm, but she has been a point of confusion as I was expecting to see something from her around December. And no .... I definitely didn't get them mixed up ... it's all a bit backwards with these 2.

"1) Some fully formed babies, though dead, were retained from last year and spoiled the litter"

I don't think so. Retaining dead babies would have been fatal in short order due to septicemia. I also don't think that fertilization was done in "two stages". I think the different stages is due to development problems, rather than different timing.

[Invisible Snake]

Sorry for your loss

[thamneil]

Sorry to hear that. Never nice losing an animal, especially one that is seemingly doing well.

[gregmonsta]

"1) Some fully formed babies, though dead, were retained from last year and spoiled the litter"

I don't think so. Retaining dead babies would have been fatal in short order due to septicemia. I also don't think that fertilization was done in "two stages". I think the different stages is due to development problems, rather than different timing.

Probably more likely. But I do think embryos can be retained for longer than we give this sort of occurrence credit for, especially when sealed in their membranes or amongst partially calcified yolk material. The timing is strange, as is that at 1 month+ premature I would received 4 seemingly full-term neonates, and a mixture of slugs and premature newborns.

Another note would be that she passed a rather large blockage several weeks after the initial labour - 3 slugs, squashed together with one of the 'mini-snakes' sandwiched in between. These slugs were more white-ish/calcified than the softer material which may have had to pass this blockage beforehand.

[chris-uk]

On the balance of what you've described I think the most likely explanation is that she retained some embryos that didn't develop, then had some fresh eggs fertilised. It's possible that the retained eggs made the environment inhospitable for the newly fertilised ones, hence she had what can only be described as a miscarriage and her body subsequently expelled the older blockage.
It sounds plausible, but it's one of those mysteries that is impossible to know what happened.