Breeding Update: End of Season

It looks like I will not be having any viable young this year. My female dropped the rest of her litter last Saturday and they were all stillborns with one last slug. She is now in shed and has taken a meal, so at least she is recovering nicely. I have tried to find solace in the fact that she is in good health and should be ready to try again this year. But cleaning up dead babies is just no fun.

Robophidians

Since my real snakes are doing less than stellar I thought I would post this sweet video of robotic snakes. They were built by the folks at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute.

Breeding Update

My albino female had her pre-birth waxy stool yesterday and with it came 2 unfertilized eggs, 5 still born babies and some regular stool. It is not uncommon for a female to deliver premature babies with a defecation within the last month but to have her drop such a mess right around the time she is supposed to deliver makes me less than optimistic. She has thinned out a lot after all this but is still acting like a pre-parturition female as opposed to one who just delivered. I am going to give her a week and she how she behaves but this may be the end of my season this year. I am disappointed and a little mad. This season has been rife with problems and set backs that do not seem to trace back to any problems in my husbandry. Just lots of bad luck.

In other snake news, my male Fredward is still not doing very well. He developed a mystery sickness around the holidays and has not responded to any form of treatment. I helped him shed for the third time now. He cannot control his head movement enough to shed properly and he has to be assisted. I think he may be at the end of the line. I will try to feed him one last time this week and if he still cannot swallow then he will have to be put down.

Funny how easily we forget that we are working with wild animals and abiding by nature's laws. I thought I would have produced ten times my current collection this year and instead it looks like I am losing half of it.