Another one for maternal incubation...

[anatess]

It's been a while since I posted updates on our snakes. My husband, the kids, and I have been on a debate on whether to try to breed our pastel and spider. I was all against it, everybody else was for it - so, I lost the vote. Again.

My husband's friends have been egging him on because of the kind of morphs we have. So, they put the two together every other week starting last December. By January, nothing was happening and the spider (who is usually a really good eater) stopped eating, so I put a stop to the whole operation.

Curly, the pastel, never did show signs of ovulation or anything, so we figured she was too young - she was only 1500g at 3 years old last Christmas. Everything went back to normal until about 5 weeks ago when she went through a shed. Curly stopped eating and I was getting antsy after weeks and weeks of her refusing food.

Well, last Wednesday, we tried to feed her again and got a surprise - she had eggs! She tried to bite my husband, so we left her alone trying to figure out what to do next. Since we don't plan to do any other breeding besides this one, we've decided to do maternal incubation before we tried to breed them last year. I read up a lot on it from this site and on some books and it felt like that's the route for us.

Today is Friday - 2 days into the thing - and we are ready to be co-parents. We think. We prepared a plastic shoebox with a hole for her to get in and out of, and put the set-up into a sterilite container to get the humidity better controlled. It's running steady at 80% with temperature in the shoebox flunctuating between 86 and 87F and temperature outside the shoebox around 80F. So, we attempted the move. Man, she's gone from docile kids' pet python to nightmare momma overnight! We had to do the towel maneuver!

While we were moving her, we were able to see the eggs and there are 5 of them - candled nice and pretty. And since we were able to get her uncoiled from her eggs for a little bit, we figured to try to feed her. And she ate! Yep, she did. So then we put her in the shoebox and she went and curled right around her eggs.

It's a great relief... for now. But, I'm still biting my nails - I was half ready to beg Mike C for his incubator. But now that she fed, I think we're gonna be okay. I have to say, I wasn't liking this idea of breeding, but now, I'm kinda excited! This is going to be a very long summer.

I know you're gonna want pics. So here goes:

Eggs:


Swallowing her food down (I didn't take a picture of her while the rat wasn't swallowed yet because I had only the flashlight on to give her a safe feeling):


Back to her job:


Hope this all works out and gives the maternal incubation crowd a success story.

[llovelace]

Congrats!! Please be sure to keep us posted on the progress.

[seeya205]

Good luck! Bumble bees are awesome!

[Gavin Cooper]

Good luck. The eggs already look a little dried out though. They should be nice and plump with no dimpling until later in the cycle.
If they don't start to plump up I woulld get an incubator and have it on stand by just in case.


Gavin

[Bruce Whitehead]

Congrats on the eggs, but not sure you need to worry about feeding her if she is going to be sitting on eggs (seriously, think about that one). She can be off feed for half a year or more without concern.

Most people incubate so that they can get their snakes eating again, but maternally incubating means that you delay that process for at least two more months.

Good luck with them.

Bruce

[Jason Bowden]

Hope the new mommy does a good job! Congrats!

[anatess]

Yeah, they're still a bit dimpled but they're not as dimply as yesterday, so hopefully the increased humidity in the box is gonna work out. I'm thinking of misting tomorrow if they're still dimply. Curly is really not liking it when we open the tub though. I opened it today to change the water and her head poked out of the shoe box ready to strike! Good thing I had the towel handy. So, I'm thinking I probably should change the water every 2-3 days now instead of daily. What do y'all think?

Yeah, we got an igloo that I'm fixing into a bator just in case we need to evac the eggs. I probably can't get it stabilized until mid-week, so I hope everything is good 'til then.

Oh, and I just realized that since Curly ate, she might poop on the eggs! Didn't think of that. I'm gonna have to figure out what to do in that case...

[davidnizmo]

congrats on the eggs bumblebee are great i would incubate them myself so the momma can get some rest but my buddy has done it that way with no problems so good luck

[Bruce Whitehead]

She may leave the eggs to defecate, but if you are maternally incubating, just relax and let her do her job, stop feeding her.

She is a snake, her system is designed to deal with this process and she can go without feed.

Bruce

PS: Some snakes, even when off the eggs, simply do not eat till within 7 days of their clutches hatching. Nature kicks in and circumvents our attempts to get them on feed again. It is natural.

[anatess]

Thanks for all the advice and encouragement guys! The 2 eggs that I can see are not dimply like yesterday anymore! Yeay. Any advice on whether to keep changing the water daily or leave it for 3 days at a stretch?