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 King Snake Eggs - changing colour!
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lynda-ki
Snake Mite

2 Posts

Posted - 02/03/2011 :  19:51:30  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Hi everyone,
Im a total newbie. My 13 year old son got a KS for his birthday two weeks ago. We love him/her. It went off its food for a week but then ate a defrosted chick about four days ago. Loves being handled and is fairly feisty. Since yesterday some strange objects have appeared in the vivarium. There are poos in there too of course but these 'things' look like lumps of wax, as big as your thumb. When they first appear (each time we go back we can see another, there are 6 total now) they LOOK like eggs. Egg shaped, cream coloured and soft/sticky. I noticed that each one changed colour after a while, becoming yellow. I made an improvised incubator using the bark from the base of the tank in a little plastic biscuit tray. Damped some of the bark and left them there. The ones which have changed colour look almost solid and yellow. The remaining ones look like eggs but I see the colour beginning to change. Are these strange poos, or are they indeed eggs and are we saving them?

Kehhlyr
The Resident Loon

United Kingdom
511 Posts

Posted - 02/03/2011 :  20:12:04  Show Profile  Click to see Kehhlyr's MSN Messenger address  Reply with Quote
They most certainly sound like eggs.
If they stay a nice whiteish colour then they'll be fertile if they go a honey sort of colour and quite hard then they will more than likely be slugs.
Slugs are unfertilised eggs.
If they are fertile and you WANT to save them then you'd be better off building an incubator but it's not something that's an easy thing to do for a novice keeper.
If you don't particularly want to go down the avenue of incubating, then pop them into a sandwish bag or similar and put them in the freezer for a couple days. It's not cruel as no embryo has attached or started growing so soon after incubation.

Quite often some snakes will seemingly drop eggs for no apparent reason other than they can.
If you could try get a pic then we'll probably be able to give an idea of if they're fertile or not.

And lastly, Welcome to the forum.

-=Kehhlyr - The Resident Loon
SOME OF MY ANIMALS

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lynda-ki
Snake Mite

2 Posts

Posted - 02/03/2011 :  21:45:17  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Thank you, this is great info! Obviously because Tizzy is alone, she wont have her eggs fertilised. How long do these things take with snakes? Im afraid they will all be slugs then :( Im not very good at sending photos via the internet tho I do have my blackberry. I feel disappointed really because it would have been lovely to have some little snakelings slithering about :) If they had been good eggs, what stops the mother from eating her newborns? There is not much info on the KS, Im glad Ive come to this website!
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Kehhlyr
The Resident Loon

United Kingdom
511 Posts

Posted - 02/03/2011 :  22:57:26  Show Profile  Click to see Kehhlyr's MSN Messenger address  Reply with Quote
They can lay the eggs over a period of a few days or a few hours, there's no telling how many she'll have so it's just a matter of waiting and making sure she's ok.
Regardless of if you think they're slugs it's always safer to freeze them for a bit, just in case.
If they had been good eggs, the thing that would stop the mother from eating them (and from them eating each other) will be you.
It's better to keep young kings separate, all kings apart really, as their natural prey item is other snakes so hatchlings (baby kings) would make a nice little snake for the mother king.

There's a fair wealth of info on kingsnakes on this forum as well as otherplaces on the interweb, but I believe we're the only UK based dedicated kingsnake site.

If you want to post pics, which is a sensible idea as we like looking at other peoples kings as well, then have a read of this thread: http://www.thekingsnake.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1586 as it should help you out.

-=Kehhlyr - The Resident Loon
SOME OF MY ANIMALS

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