Ophelia Is Expecting

[pomba gira]

My serpent is going to be a mama! A few weeks ago we bred Ophelia, my Amel cornsnake, with Tokagemaru's Creamsicle corn Terminator. Last week she shed, which is supposed to be a sign she will lay soon. She's spent the past couple days investigating the laying box I made for her, another good sign! I'm a bit worried 'cos she hasn't eaten in over a month and I know reproducing is hard on any critter. But if all goes well we should have little snakelets for sale soon! I don't know enough about cornsnake genetics to predict what colors we'll get but they're bound to be pretty any way it goes. I'm excited!

[Guest Megalicious]

YAY!!!!

[hunhee]

holy crap!! this is COOL!!!!!

Congrats! Whatcha gonna do with the babies?

EDIT TO SAY: We need pictures

[Onyx]

Wow. That will be amazing to watch.

I used to have a cornsnake.

and yes, please share pictures!

[TygerLili]

That's pretty cool.

How do you breed snakes? I'm not being a smartass, I'm genuinely curious.

[EnViOuSPoPpEt]

Congrats I hope all of her babies are healthy

[Homicidalheathen]

Medusa granny...kinda has a nice ring to it!

[pomba gira]

Well, looks like I should forget about a career as a serpent breeder. Found two eggs last nite & one this afternoon... two obviously infertile and one possibly fertile but almost certainly dead by the time I found it. Seems she didn't like the laying box I made her 'cos the eggs were all outside of it. Maybe it was too small... or the moss was too damp... who knows. Bummer, I was really excited about the whole deal.

Tygerlili, getting corn snakes to breed is ridiculously easy... you just put a male & female together and let nature take its course. Professional breeders do it in the spring after brumating the snakes all winter (brumation= kind of a semi-hibernation herps do in winter), but I'm told they will happily couple at any season. We decided to try breeding Ophelia & Terminator 'cos she was spending a lot of time cruising around her cage like she was hunting, but wouldn't take any food (I have a new pet rat for my classroom as a result of her lack of appetite- I named it Lucky). So we figured maybe she was looking for a mate. Which turned out to be true, but apparently Ophelia is just not feelin' the motherhood gig.

Anyway, the tricky part about corn breeding is supposed to be (a) successfully incubating the clutch, and (b) getting the hatchlings to eat their first couple meals. If you can hatch a clutch & get them eating, you can sell them from $20 on up, depending on the color morph and how much rep you have as a breeder.

Pix: me & Ophelia, fall of '07.

[pomba gira]

Flash update! Well looks like there is still hope... after the last post Ophelia continued to act restless & agitated, and still wouldn't eat. So after a week of her spending more & more time constantly cruising around the cage, knocking over the cage furniture, crumpling the substrate (aka paper towel), rubbing her nose on the glass, etc., I got worried and called Preuss Pet Shop (worth a visit to Lansing, esp. if you're into birds or herps) yesterday. The helpful herp department dude suggested that she might not like the setup I had for her and was waiting until she found a better place to lay the rest of the clutch. So I put the moss in the intended incubation box which was a bit larger than the intended laying box. She immediately investigated the new box, then went into her preferred hide spot under the water bowl, and was still there when I left for Tokagemaru's last nite. I figured her calming down like that was a good sign... and sure enough when I got home she was coiled under the moss in the new laying box, and I could see a couple healthy-looking eggs showing! We just now set up the incubation box and pried the proud mama away from the egg mass... which consists of 17 healthy-looking eggs and one obvious infertile. Not damn bad, I think the average clutch is about 12 or so. So now the clutch is cozily incubating in my laundry room, and Ophelia is resting with Tokagemaru... looking exhausted and very thin. Gotta go out and get her a mouse tomorrow.

Stay tuned for details of the incubation and (hopefully) hatching process!

[GothicRavenGoddess (3)]

WOOHOO!

CONGRATS!!!