Egg Help Needed!

[PythonChick]

Hi guys. I am having some humidity issues with my eggs. From the beginning, the egg shells looked a little funny. At about day 14-15 of incubation, several eggs started dimpling. I attempted to increase the humidity, but now the eggs are looking too wet on the bottom. To complicate matters, I believe the egg shells have some kind of defect. I will get a picture of what they look like now tonight, but they are sort of pockmarked with areas of really thick shell interspersed with area of really thin shell. This makes the surface of the eggs look bumpy and very strange. As of last night they all still candled good, but they look really rough. I have tried to lower the humidity. If you look very closely at the picture of the eggs after they were just laid, you can see that the shells look a little speckled. It is these speckles which have turned into the dents and bumps on the eggs. I am really worried about them, and I really don't want to lose this clutch so any advice is appreciated.

Here they are when they were first laid:



I will get pictures of them tonight to show how bad they are looking. Other eggs in the same incubator in the same conditions are looking all right, though we have been struggling with humidity issues the entire time. This clutch also had one infertile egg that started to mold. I removed the bad egg and am applying athlete's foot powder cream to the two spots of mold that spread onto healthy eggs. The clutch is at day 19 now, so they still have a long way to go.

[Pepee]

Wow ... I'm sorry to hear this !
I can't help you with your problem but,
i realy hope your clutch will come out great.

[muddoc]

You do not want to lower the humidity, but you don't want the eggs to be too wet. This is the dance that you dance when incubating eggs. From the picture, it looks to me like you could benefit from more medium in the incubation box. I would suggest adding some more medium to the box, and mixing it with the other medium. This will get the eggs a bit higher off the bottom of the box. Then pour some water in one corner of the box, so that the water will sink to the bottom of the box, and provide more water for increased humidity, but not get the substarte so wet that it harms the eggs.

As for the dimples and miscolored marks on the eggs, that is somewhat normal, and should not affect the hatchlings. Some females are just better at shelling eggs than others.

Hope that helps,

[FatBoy]

I agree with Tim...I try to have my vermiculite atleast 2 1/2 - 3" thick in the bottom of the egg tub. The moisture will settle a bit and there is a big difference in moisture and humidity.

[PythonChick]

Thanks for the replies so far. I will deepen my substrate and see if that helps. Also, here are some pics of the eggs as they are now:





I believe you will see why I am alarmed. However, if you notice in the candling picture, they all still have good eggs.

[muddoc]

I have had eggs just like that hatch with no problems. As long as there are good veins, and the eggs don't dehydrate too much, they should be fine. Let us know how they do after you add some more medium.

[akaangela]

Good luck. I hope they hatch for you. I will keep my fingers crosses for you.

[davidnizmo]

i wish u the best of luck on them eggs mine were dimpled looking but never went that far keep us up to date on them

[PythonChick]

Tomorrow is day 50 and they are driving me insane with waiting! The egg which was on top of the clutch in the pictures is badly dimpled and appears like it may be bad. It still candles a healthy pink color, but is so dimpled that I can't tell if it has veins. All the other eggs are still pin upon candling, and I can see varying degrees of veins in all of them. I even saw movement when I candled one of them yesterday. I will probably cut them on Monday or Tuesday at day 53-54 since they had been cooking between 88 and 89. I will be sure to update with pictures. Thanks for the advice everyone!

[Quiet Tempest]

My female laid eggs this year that had that same weird "snowflaking" effect going on with her egg shells. She laid perfectly smooth eggs the year before. I've seen this with corn snakes but never with ball eggs. Definitely different but I guess it happens from time to time.

Good luck with your clutch! I look forward to seeing baby pics!