#It's like a Kozik vinyl figure that you have to feed and house and provide veterinary care for the next 15+ years

[omg-snakes]

Hi I just want to say I love your blog and your snakes are so freaking cute!! I also had a question if you have time to answer it. I really love reptiles and would like to get into reptile keeping (probably not for a year or so as I have one more semester of my bachelor's degree and then will probably be moving). I've been doing a lot of research in preparation for bringing one home in the future. However, I've been wondering, do people ever sell fertilized reptile hatching eggs for people to hatch? I don't think this is something I would do if any breeders offered it because I don't have much experience, but I do breed chickens and people do this all the time with chicken eggs, so I was wondering if it is something people do with reptiles too. I imagine shipping would be harder with reptile eggs than chicken eggs bc of how soft they are, but I was still curious and thought it might be worth asking!

Hi there!

Okay I LOVE this ask. I think about this sort of thing a lot and while it's definitely not a thing I often wish it could be.

The very short answer is that for most reptiles, selling a fertilized egg to hatch at home is not feasible. It's definitely not possible to ship fertilized reptile eggs with any hope of hatching them, but in a few rare cases you could possibly sell one in person, in an insulated container, and if the buyer went straight home and got it into an incubator it would probably be okay.

There are a few reasons why reputable reptile breeders don't do this.

Consider that chickens have a fast rate of maturity, relatively fast incubation, regular and predictable breeding cycle, and eggs can rest for a bit before they're incubated for hatching. All of this adds up to eggs that are relatively abundant, inexpensive, forgiving in terms of being jostled since the eggs are designed to be turned during incubation, a quick turnaround from purchase to enjoying your new pet, and within a year, if you hatched a hen, you'll be able to make more eggs. As a domesticated species bred for hardiness and responsiveness to human care, healthy chicks will start eating and displaying normal chickeny behaviors right away.

Corn snakes, for contrast, take up to 4 years to mature, they only breed once per year and lay a relatively small number of eggs per breeding season compared to an average chicken, their eggs take 65-ish days to incubate, and the embryos adhere to the top of the egg very soon after the eggs are laid so they can not be turned or the embryo will be smothered by their own yolk. Once hatched, a corn snake neonate will not eat until after their first shed and sometimes a bit after that! This can be a harrowing, delicate time in a baby snake's life and they need an experienced keeper to help them thrive.

Furthermore, chickens come in specialized breeds where corn snakes are an undomesticated species. Reptiles come in color morphs but they don't have defined breeds with expected size, color, temperament, health expectations, or fecundity the way chickens do.

So if you were to, say, buy buff orpington hatching eggs, you'd reliably hatch buff orpingtons, with orpington personalities and characteristics. If you bred two hypo corn snakes, you'd definitely get hypo corn snake babies but you might also get other color morphs depending on the genetics of the parents. Unless you know very well the specific genes, temperaments, sizes, and health histories of the parents you won't have any idea of what's going to hatch. And even with all that information, it's still quite variable!

Finally, corn snakes cost a lot more than most chicken breeds and the price of a snake is in part determined by the genes they carry. Two snakes in the same clutch might vary significantly in terms of color expression, so you could have a $50 snake and a $200 snake in the same clutch! Since every egg carries a risk of failing to hatch, sellers don't usually price their snakes until they're alive, eating, and thriving. If a seller were to price their eggs, knowing the genetics of the parents that produced said eggs, they'd either be taking a huge loss on the value of a potentially valuable snake or asking their buyer to incur a significant loss should an expensive egg fail. If a breeder were to go this route, they'd probably only offer eggs that they know are low-dollar-value or have low desirability, and then we have to ask why somebody is breeding snakes they don't think are desirable...

All said and done, it's probably a safer idea to contact a local breeder and ask them to tag an egg for you, allowing you the first right of refusal on whomever hatches. They'll insure that "your" egg stays safe and if for any reason it does fail, you won't have invested anything in it except hope.

I hope this helps explain and that I didn't crush anybody's dreams.