Why I would NEVER do Maternal Incubation.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

This is a spinoff from this thread: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...nal-Incubation

Here are the reasons I would NEVER do Maternal Incubation:

Maternal Incubation would be something fun to "play" with if your breeding normals, or working with inexpensive snakes. But for those of us breeding higher dollar snakes it is something I would never even begin to consider, and for good reason.

1.) Cost. You can build an excellent simple incubator for less then $300. Mine is four years old and still works perfectly. Considering it has successfully incubated more then $60,000 worth of snake babies, I would say that the less then $300 spent on it is absolutely irrelevant.

2.) The babies. I have total control over the babies. Because of all the work our founding snake fathers have done, I know exactly what the perfect incubation temperature, humidity, conditions are and can consistently provide the best possible conditions to insure the highest hatch rate and the healthiest babies in the end.

3.) The what if's. My incubator is a completely insulated large cooler. The bottom is covered with full water bottles for temperature stabilization. In the event of extended power loss, even in cooler weather, I will be fine. In fact it has happened. Because it is an insulated cooler it holds temperatures WAY better then a rack ever could. The water bottles on the bottom retain heat for a long time in that insulated scenario. When my power went out it was 24 hours before my cooler temperature dropped 10 degrees. At that point I ended up plugging the incubator into my car power inverter for two hours to bring it back up to temperature. About 20 hours later when I was ready to heat it up again the power was restored. The whole thing probably ended up costing me a gallon of gas. There was over $11,000 worth of eggs in the incubator at the time.

4.) the mom. I want those eggs away from the mom the second they are out of her. The day she lays the snake is removed and the tub is scrubbed top to bottom. That next day she is offered food for first time. I then put her on a very heavy feeding schedule feeding multiple rats often. My number one goal is to get the weight back on her absolutely as quickly as possible so she is ready to lay an even larger clutch the next season. Yes the mom may eat some while she is incubating the kids but she isn't eating nearly enough. "playing around" with maternal incubation could cause her to not gain enough weight back in time for the next season. At this point in the game a missed year for some of my females could be a loss of $10,000 worth of babies.

[CCfive]

I guess if your breeding on a larger scale like yourself, I see your point. If someone like myself, who will only be looking at a couple clutches (like you stated) it probably isn't as big a deal. I'll be breeding my pin, pastels, spider going the long route to some(hopefully) bees, lemonblasts, super pastels and so on. Since I'm not worried about the money so much I'm looking forward to trying maternal incubation on a couple clutches.

[adamjeffery]

i too am contemplating maternal incubation the season after next. i have a normal female reduced pattern black back dinker that when she is big enough will get my male reduced pattern dinker. this clutch is inportant but not as much as say my gargoyle clutches or killer bee ones. the more expensive clutches will be in the incubator while the one clutch i may try maternal incubation. not for any other reason than to say i have done it and to experience it for my self.
adam jeffery
while we may have the knowledge to artificially incubate eggs, the balls themselves have been doing it for much longer and much better than us. the eggs seem to hatch out bigger babies that are stronger and exit the egg sooner. their are benefits to both.

[Quiet Tempest]

I have done artificial incubation in the past and I just don't have good luck with it. Granted, it was a Hovabator the first time and then a mini-fridge incubator the next but both times I lost eggs and it's one of the worst feelings in the world to watch a perfectly healthy egg go downhill in the course of a week. I may not be very good at maintaining eggs in an incubator but my females are born to do it and I'm very good at maintaining the temp and humidity in my snake's tubs. That's why I prefer this route. So far I have not lost any eggs left with brooding mothers. Now I have no way of knowing if the eggs that died in an incubator in the previous years would have survived if left with their mothers but I'm far more comfortable with letting their mother look after them and I look after their mother. The first female I ever bred maternally incubated her clutch and all eggs hatched out perfectly healthy. She has done this three years in a row now and I've only lost one baby due to severe kinking that I believe came as a result to a heat spike in the room (since more than one clutch was affected with abnormalities). I'll be giving her the upcoming season off because she more than deserves a break but she ate small rats (she usually receives smalls or mediums when not on eggs) throughout and would be ready to go again if I needed her to.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I guess if your breeding on a larger scale like yourself, I see your point. If someone like myself, who will only be looking at a couple clutches (like you stated) it probably isn't as big a deal. I'll be breeding my pin, pastels, spider going the long route to some(hopefully) bees, lemonblasts, super pastels and so on. Since I'm not worried about the money so much I'm looking forward to trying maternal incubation on a couple clutches.

It has nothing to do with scale... assuming in your example of breeding simple morph male to simple morph females... If for whatever reason you had 1 more egg hatch as result of an incubator vs loosing one because of maternal incubation, you have more then paid for the incubator, even on such a small scale.

That said, there is nothing wrong with someone trying out maternal incubation for whatever reason. With all the threads lately going around about the subject, I feel it is important for especially newer people to see why some of us would never even consider maternal incubation.

iwhile we may have the knowledge to artificially incubate eggs, the balls themselves have been doing it for much longer and much better than us. the eggs seem to hatch out bigger babies that are stronger and exit the egg sooner. their are benefits to both.

1.) The idea that moms know how to incubate better then us while being forced to live in a man made unnatural enivroment is a stretch at best.
2.) I have never seen any information that suggests that babies resulting from maternal incubation have been bigger or stronger then those incubated in incubators.
3.) Babies do NOT exit the egg sooner during maternal incubation. The opposite is the norm.

IThe first female I ever bred maternally incubated her clutch and all eggs hatched out perfectly healthy. She has done this three years in a row now and I've only lost one baby due to severe kinking that I believe came as a result to a heat spike in the room (since more than one clutch was affected with abnormalities).

This is the kind of freak thing that can be totally avoided with a properly set up incubator. Can my incubator suffer from some kind of freak heat spike? Yes, but because I use a second thermostat specifically to protect against this, the eggs would be fine.

In fact, short of the room catching on fire, I am pretty well covered in almost any scenario... and even in the event of a fire, I would much rather my eggs be in the incubator then a rack.

[Python Lair]

Incubators are what i'm using for my first season, I made my own incubator and feel it is the best/safest way for my eggs since I don't want to loose anything!

Cost:
Coca cola fridge: 50
Thermostat: 118
Incubator Fan: 20
Shelving: 20
5 Egg Boxes and medium: 10
Heat tape: had extra

Total: 218

This incubator will hold 16 clutches comfortably with not much temp fluctuation. Cost less than a Pinstripe Female!! I'm a beginner breeder but I still feel that incubation, cutting eggs and using mediums are a great way to 1. better your clutches, and 2. cause less deaths.

[Quiet Tempest]

1.) The idea that moms know how to incubate better then us while being forced to live in a man made unnatural enivroment is a stretch at best.
2.) I have never seen any information that suggests that babies resulting from maternal incubation have been bigger or stronger then those incubated in incubators.
3.) Babies do NOT exit the egg sooner during maternal incubation. The opposite is the norm.

1. Of course they know how to incubate better than us. We have to pore through books, guides and forums or ask each other what we're doing and why. They instinctively know to seek out a suitable nest site and then tightly coil around their eggs once their laid. When they leave the eggs to feed, they don't have to be told to go regroup and recoil their clutch. Unless you have issues with maintaining an adequate environment for the snake, there should be no conflict for a brooding female.

2. There is this.. http://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/publipdf/2005/AEER7.pdf

3. The earliest I've had babies hatch has been 53 days and the latest has been this year at 70 days. The same time variation can occur in artificial incubators. I don't think there's any reason to believe that babies will emerge more quickly in one scenario over the other but I would say that the babies who incubate longer (at normal temps) are more likely to hatch out larger/stronger than their counterparts and that goes for maternally or artificially incubated clutches.

[wolfy-hound]

From my clutches in the incubator this season, my earlier hatching eggs made huge babies, the later eggs had small babies. Perhaps I'm just skewing the grade curve.

I see so many people fussing over their snakes not eating for a couple weeks, yet they are willing to have a female that hasn't eaten regularly for about a month(while gravid) go through a further TWO MONTHS of not eating, just to have the maternal incubation?

And how exactly is a female going to "instinctively know to seek out a suitable nest site" when being kept captive? Are you allowing her to roam the wilds of africa or keeping her in a secure enclosure? She has the "choice" of "the enclosure" or.... "the enclosure". It's not as if the female can crawl out and adjust the thermostat herself.

If someone wants to try maternal incubation and doesn't mind having a female basically fast for nearly 3 full months in order to do so, fine. *I* won't ever do it, because I prefer to allow my females to eat and recover from being gravid. I fuss over the weight they lose just producing eggs, I won't add to it by refusing to incubate the eggs for her.

[Homegrownscales]

I have not tried maternally incubation. Though the previous year I thought the same... Females would be fasting through incubation. But I have watched one of tempests threads on maternal incubation. The females did eat from what I saw they ate still covering their nests. Small
Meals but they didn't fast. I found the whole thing Fascinating. Really. Though I'd like to give it a go I have good luck with my incubator. And I like having that access and control with the eggs.


Check out what's new on my website... www.Homegrownscales.com

[snake lab]

Yes the female knows how to incubate better then us. If they ate in africa in their world under natural circumstances but not in captivity where they live in tubs with a human syressing them out, disturbing them, cleaning their cage, opening and closing their tub to look. Yes they know how to regulate temps, but why chance it. You can be succesful with maternal incubation but when incubating eggs you want the odds in your favor. Your best odds are when you incubate with an incubator. It does not take long for eggs to go bad if they have too much temp flucuation. With a good incubator you dont have this problem. I have a walk in incubator made out of a converted walk in closet and i can control every aspect of incubation perfect. I have excellent odds with large quantities of clutches. Whether your doing 1 clutch or 100 clutches your main goal is not to loose eggs so if you can sway the odds in your favor then why wouldnt you do it. Again im not saying you cant do maternal incubation but im talking odds. Now i know a couple big breeders that do maternal incubation but if you saw their setups and the scope of the money that they spend on their facilities you would flip. So whats it worth to you? Too many people think cause they see the ball python market that they can get into it and just put snakes together and make a fortune are kidding themselves. You have to spend money to make it and at the end of the day it is a money driven industry and you wouldnt have the morphs you have today if it wasnt.