Firstly, we lost Rougale during the last breeding season. She had gotten a love bite from the male during copulation, and it got infected. I was using a vet prescribed cream for reptiles suffering from scratches, cuts, and infections to treat her. We previously got this cream from a vet to treat Zeus (an old butter corn we used to have) for a double eye infection some time ago and the cream worked wonderfully. The vet said it could be used for most any skin ailment and he regularly uses it on reptiles. Her infection did go down and seemed to be healing, so despite her skipping a meal she was still moving around fine and I thought she was getting better. Unfortunately she died by the end of that day after she had seemed perfectly fine that morning. Rougale was one of my favorites, cause despite being a bad eater when she was younger (to the point that she was skin and bones and we had to force feed her) we eventually turned her around and she turned out to be one of the calmest snakes we had to handle. She was also a gorgeous bloodred and personally one of my favorite corns. I miss her very much.
Due to her death we had an open spot available and decided to keep the anerythristic female from the 2015 Apollo X Casper group. She won't ever replace Rougale for me though I have always loved diffused bloods. However, our keeper anery is now named Hel.
Ares and Casper both have their own problems as they get older, but both are doing ok for now. Ares eats one or two mice a week to keep his weight on and occasionally skips a week if he gets a little plump. He's been off lately though. His actions reminded me of when he struck hard at the glass when I was handling a mouse nearby not noticing Ares in his tank. After that strike he zoomed in circles in that tank obviously in pain. We were more careful where we handled the mice around the room after that. Of course that was back when we still had mice of our own, we no longer have that problem today. Still he had healed from that experience with small meals in between long resting and healing periods. He hasn't shown that zooming behavior since he healed until now. It's been years in between. Now I think its because he is old and perhaps his mind or liver are starting to go. Every once in a while he goes off now, but I don't know what sets him off. I know mite ridden snakes can have those symptoms but there are no snake mites in my collection. The only other experience I have with symptoms similar are from an old old king snake from SUNY Cobleskill that I used to work with. He would bite himself, his dish, the newspaper flooring, a person, and anything really and sometimes he would get scared and dash around as well. His neurological issues I heard from the herpetology teacher were due to a failing liver.
So for now I just keep a close eye on Ares. If he starts going further down hill it might be time to think about how I want him to end. Should I put him to sleep, or try to prolong his life with treatments I probably won't be able to pay for. I shudder just thinking about it since he was my first real pet, and while he probably hates me for handling him and bothering him all these years (as all snake keepers handle their snakes to some degree and no snake actually likes this) he did help me through years of anxiety, bullying in school, and depression just by handling him when I got home. So I am close to him even if its not a dog who loves me back. I want him to be at peace in the end not scared out of his mind doing circles in the tank at an invisible enemy or in pain from something inside. So yeah I have a lot on my mind keeping an eye on him and thinking about that.
Casper has different issues now. She double clutched infertiles this year and both clutches I had to massage out of her because she just had trouble doing it. Thankfully nothing got so stuck that I couldn't help her. If spaying corn snakes is a thing I kinda wish I could get her spayed because even when not paired to a male she is laying eggs every year, and she just can't do it anymore. This being her only health concern I think she could well live past Ares if she were spayed and didn't have to deal with egg laying anymore. I believe she could get many years to her life. Again though I don't have money currently to do that kind of operation if they even can do it on such a small snake. This spring I'm thinking of moving her to a tank farther away from males to see if that might stop her from smelling them and forming eggs again. To be clear, she is not housed with any male at all, but she has consistently laid eggs on years we never paired her to any boys.
The olive gecko Cruda Natura proved that she can produce good crested babies despite her lack of crests, so we will keep her as a breeder for the future. All other geckos are doing well spare for HotRod. HotRod has a spinal kink that seemed to get worse as the gecko grew and aged, but now it seems to be staying the way it is. The gecko is not pained by it, but it is considered a special needs gecko in my opinion as the gecko cannot jump, grip, and move nicely through branches and climbing features in a tank. Hotrod had climbing stuff in the tank until I noticed it falling a lot and that the gecko was usually on the ground more often than not. This ones kink I believe came from lack of calcium in the egg (as it was one of the last eggs that year during egg laying season so the female had used up most of her reserves) and it was also a part of the Hot Gecko project which involves incubating eggs around 82 degrees F. The gecko didn't have a lot of calcium to start with and growing fast from incubation meant that it had finished the nutrients in the egg off well before hatching time resulting in a smaller weaker baby. It hatched with a tiny kink but it grew worse as it grew until now. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be getting worse now that the gecko is nearly adult size. Radical dangerous kinks in babies from that project were culled for the babies sake, but the slight one I let go since it was the only example of the experiment left from the clutches that year. So eventually I'll have to rehome Hotrod to someone who gets that it needs a little special care, and a lower tank rather than taller so that when it falls it doesn't further injure itself.
My hisser colony took a hard hit this winter for some reason and I'm left with only a few. I may let them die out naturally from here on since we can't feed them to anybody and they aren't really sitting in a viewable tank as cool viewing animals. I feel bad cause I've had them for so long but I'll let the survivors live out their lives and decide whether they breed and bring themselves back or die out as they age. It might be that they are too inbred at this point to make many healthy babies, or that something else is wrong, but I had kept them successfully for this long with no problems until the last few years.
Other than that there is not much more to report. Rosarie one of my female crested geckos had to have her tail pulled off after an infection in a small scratch made her tail stink and unusable. She has long since healed from that infection thanks to having her tail removed. I need update pictures of her though.
That's about it though. I realize looking at our corns that if I ever did intend to breed again we would need an unrelated proven female for any further breeding. I would prefer a big long female considering my bloodlines seem to be for small short corn genetics. I would love to prove out Fides our ghost boy from The 2015 Apollo X Casper clutch for any hidden ultra het he may have. I've had a suspicion for some time that he and Casper have a hidden ultra het just form the way the colors have been off on all of Caspers babies. Though I can't include the tessera Apollo's and her offspring because tessera genes mess with colors. Her babies with Ares however were all quite interesting to look at for normals and had a lot of normal variation in them. I don't know but an amelanistic female sounds perfect to test Fides for ultra, and because I had envisioned doing education programs with the corns again at some point in the future. I wanted to have the most common, but uncommon things you miiiight just find in the wild for corn snake colors. I wanted to show off normal or wild type, hypomelanistic, anerythristic, and amelanistic corns during these events as these are the things you are most likely to find in the wild (with amels being the rarest getting eaten in the wild as babies). So an amel female to add would be perfect realistically. I would like to sell our extra corns before I look around for that though. Once we have the amel girl we will be done with buying corns for many years so long as she proves to be a good breeder. I don't plan on buying any of the pretty new things coming out in corns and right now we can't go much further or get any larger than we are currently. Perhaps in the future. Though really now palmettos are freaking gorgeous and if I found a good priced one or got money from some job venture I would definitely want just one non bug eyed palmetto. I like the ones with the normal red flecking the best. What about you guys?