breeding egg laying

LAYING
About 60 days after mating, usually late April or early May the female will lay her clutch of eggs. Most females stop eating two or three weeks before laying, and usually a female will shed a week or two before the the laying begins, signs that it is time to provide her terraruim with a moistened area under her hidebox. Many breeders like to provide a dark box of damp, not wet, peat moss for the female. Corn snakes like to nest in darkness, and many females seem to be fond of laying under a preferred hidebox if the substrate under it is moist enough. Do what you must do ensure that a moist, diggable nesting area is available for the pregnant female, otherwise she may not lay and will become eggbound (requiring a trip to the veterinarian and possibly losing the snake) or will deposit her eggs randomly in the cage. Where they will hydrate and die. Clutches in cornsnakes vary tremendously, from only 4 or 5 eggs in small females to 30 or more in larger females. Obviosly larger individuals have more body cavity room to hold more eggs. Corn snake eggs vary greatly in shape from elongated to almost round and also vary in size. Most females produce elongated eggs about 1.5 inch long, but the shape of the package has little to do with the viability of the embryos within. Females may lay different sizes and shapes of eggs in different clutches. It should be noted that some females lay a second, smaller egg clutch later in the season (females can store sperm for several mating seasons), but this should not be counted upon. After the females lays, she usually will go about another week or ten days before shedding and then resuming normal feeding behavior. Theat her well while she recovers her energy and food reserves. Start her out with small prey items that take little energy to digest and reserve the large meals for a month or two after she has begun to eat regularly and returns to her charming old self.


EGGS AND YOUNG
The eggs should be removed (intact if stuck together and always left in the same surface facing up) to an incubator as soon as possible after the female has finished  laying. This helps prevent accidents such as being crushed by the parents and dehydration because humidity levels could not be controlled. Incubators can be complicated commercial models or simple plastic boxes filled with damp paper towels or vermuculite. The object is to keep the eggs at a constant tempature of about 80F (27C) and close to 100% humidity without excessive condensation. ( if you let the tempature fluctuate, make sure it drops more often than it rises; tempatures over 85F can be dangerous, while tempatures down to 75F just slow development) An entire book could be written on incubating snake eggs, but perhaps the best procedure is to read several books or articles to get an idea of the various incubation plans used by breeders and hobbyists and then talk to a few keepers who have succesfully incubated corn snake eggs. Snake egg incubation is far from a science and definitely more of an acquired skill. Because corn snakes lay adhesive eggs, you should remove the entire clump and not try to clean them too much. If you pull the eggs apart you will tear the shells. Put the eggs to the surface of the vermiculite (the material of choise for incubators); do not bury them completely in the substrate. The vermiculite should be kep moist, using a ratio of about one part of water to ten parts of vermiculite. If the eggs begin to collapse, increase the water a bit, but never make the vermiculite wet. The eggs must be able to breath, and embryos can drown just as readily as they can dehydrate. At the preferred tempature hatching should start about 50 to 60 days after laying. Remember that many factors affect development time and there are no exact rules. Incubation times to over 100 days at lower tempatures have been recorded, though often only a few of the eggs ever hatch under such conditions. Try to keep tempatures tempatures and humidity constant and you will have a much more predictable hatch. The young do not all emerge at the same time, so do not be too quick to throw away an egg that has not completely collapsed or exploded. Usually, though, you should be able to see small slits in most of the eggs at about the same time. These are produced by an egg tooth on the snout of the hatchling that is used to cut the way out of the shell, Their lungs should be developed and they need to breath air. Weak young that cannot leave the egg within a day or so of slitting may suffocate, and it probably does little harm to give them a hand by slitting the egg carefully with fine scissors or actually cutting a small section out of the egg shell. Carefully slitting eggs that have not yet hatched several days after the rest of the clutch has emerged may save a few very weak or slow young that cannot penetrate the egg shell. Corn snake hatchlings vary quite a bit in length, From about 10 inches to 14 inches. Their first shed will occur anywhere from three to seven days after hatching; they then should start feeding on pinkies. The first meal may be a problem. Some hatchlings will take only live pinkies at first, while others may eat only short bloody segments of mousetails, 'braining' sometimes helps difficult feeders start eating. This rather cruelsome process consists of cutting off or opening up the top of a pinkies head and exposing the brain. The scent of blood and brains seems to initiate feeding responces in many hatchlings. Some corn snakes hatchlings will feed only on small lizards or lizard tails; such young and those that require force-feeding, probably are beyond the help of the beginning corn snake breeders. If kept healthy and fed well, corn snakes typically reach maturity at an age of 18 to 24 months and certainly by the age of three years. Most of their growth in length stops by the age of three or four, though growth continues very slowly throughout life as in most snakes. Keeping careful records of your new snakes from hatching throughout life will make keeping and breeding other corns easier. You can recognize individual corn snakes by details of the pattern, but expect these to change somewhat as the snake matures. The colours also can be expected to change somewhat - significantly in some breeds - with time. You wont get rich breeding corns, but you can expect to have fun and a great learning experience.