Maternal Incubation

[Neal]

I'm curious for all of you who prefer to do maternal incubation over using an incubator as to what substrate you all use. I'm thinking of getting an incubator regardless because of my Rufous Beaked Snakes, but when I get a few balls because they'll be in a rack I'm thinking of letting them maternal incubate.

[Sama]

We use cypress bedding. It's good for helping maintain the humidity.

[Wobbilly5]

I also use 100% Cypress Mulch during maternal incubation. So far I'm 13/13 on eggs maternally incubated this year. It works!

[Neal]

Good to know. I was wondering if anybody used just regular newspaper or stuff like that and I wasn't sure so I figured it's best to ask.

[FireStorm]

We use cypress, and sometimes mix in coconut husk. We also provide damp sphagnum moss. Some of the females actually lay their eggs in the moss, others don't, but just having it in the enclosure really helps keep humidity up.

[boyer.michael.s]

I feel like I see more and more people giving this a try and it is making me want to give it a try as well since I have never done maternal incubation before. With that said, normally we keep sealed containers with essentially 100% humidity for artificial incubation but what humidity level is recommended for maternal incubation as you wouldn't be able to achieve those levels of humidity with maternal incubation.

[FireStorm]

I've honestly not been measuring humidity in the tubs during maternal incubation, but then again I never measured the humidity in the egg boxes during artificial incubation either. So far my experience has been if we keep the moss damp the eggs do fine. My guess would be that they tolerate the lower humidity because the females have them pretty covered up.

[Neal]

I've honestly not been measuring humidity in the tubs during maternal incubation, but then again I never measured the humidity in the egg boxes during artificial incubation either. So far my experience has been if we keep the moss damp the eggs do fine. My guess would be that they tolerate the lower humidity because the females have them pretty covered up.

Do you run into any issues with the humidity high like that?

[FireStorm]

No, and I think the humidity is probably not super high. The only thing different than normal is damp (not sopping wet) moss. We don't get condensation on our tubs.

[boyer.michael.s]

Id really like to hear from someone else who is experienced in maternal incubation to give their thoughts on humidity levels. The issue I am thinking about is the humidity getting too high that mold and RI's start becoming a problem. Is it fine to keep the humidity at 50-60% through the whole process? As you said, you don't regulate your humidity levels so I would like to know from those who do where they keep their humidity at during incubation.