Too bad my cruddy phone doesn’t pick it up, but the little anery masque stripe has been getting loads more freckle-y! They almost look like a dark version of a palmetto at this point with the dots of darker gray scales and blotches. If anyone could chime in on a gene that makes a stripe do that or if I’ve got something new on my hands that’d be a great help! The other two I’ve given up on ID guesses until they shed lol, retained egg tooth pic for tax, which I thought was interesting
Very interesting. The only thing that comes to mind is the paradox gene. It can cause spots, blotches, or freckles of inconsistent color or pattern. Because it’s not a heritable genetic mutation, though, it doesn’t pass to future offspring. Your guy doesn’t look much like a typical paradox, but that may be because of the tessera/stripe altering the overall pattern in the first place.
You could always wait for him to grow up and do some test breeding! It’s a fun look!
Last picture they haven’t shed yet, other ones im pretty sure they’ve shed since a small rough patch of skin that used to be on their back is now gone, but I have yet to find it, so I’m iffy on if they’ve actually even shed. I’ll get more pics once I find it and can confirm lol
They’ll usually figure the shed out if your humidity is right. Although, even with good temps between 78-84 and humidity at 60% (it was a humid spring here), I still had several that needed me to help them out of their first shed skin. And it’s very common for a bit of tail shed to stick. If they haven’t finished getting it all off in 24 hours, just moisten them with a bath (slightly cooler than your finger), and rub them down until it all comes off.
I’ll hope they feed for you, too! Force feeding is certainly a challenge. But even that can be sort of fun…when you feel like a heroic baby snake life saver!
Little guy shed! Unfortunately a lot of the freckles faded a bit, but to be fair, I haven’t gotten them out in sunlight to make a proper inspection yet. I also absolutely FREAKED OUT about what I thought was a prolapse at first, since I was wondering how this could even happen, but upon closer inspection it just seems to be a spot of some liquid that’s dried (doesn’t look like blood though? It’s more orange-y in person) if this doesn’t wash off easily or more shows up, I have a feeling a vet visit is already in order, or I’ll have to break into my snake first aid kit at home
that’s what I’m sort of thinking, it looks like there’s a small bump near the cloaca with that red-orange dried liquid over it, I’m considering moving from aspen to paper towels again just to monitor it, couldn’t hurt to be careful. If anything it’ll save me dealing with more aspen in the first place, I’m super allergic to the stuff
After some more poking around, which included doing a very careful popping to check out the rest of the cloaca, I believe the anery stripe masque to actually be a girl, but the important part is, the small fleck looks to be more like a polyp of sorts and there’s another just on the inside of her(?, I’m not the best with sexing corn snakes) cloaca. I think it’s mostly a gross looking defect over anything medically concerning given her first shed and poop went perfectly fine. Depending on how they age though I won’t plan on breeding her, in case there’s more polyps inside somewhere like the reproductive tract that might cause issues
I wouldn’t advise popping a baby who has anything unusual looking near the cloaca. Correctlyvdon’t, pooping doesn’t hurt them at all, but it is done for normal physiology. If there’s any type of abnormality or odd physiology inside, you can’t see that from the outside and there’s no way to know what you are potentially pressingon or extruding. Might be fine, but might also cause serious damage.
I’m really sorry about the ones who didn’t make it. That’s very sad. If the incubator was supposed to be at 80°F, that’s nowhere near a high temp for corns (more like above 85°F.) The survivors are really lovely though! Congrats on them. If you try again next year, hopefully you’ll have better luck.
