Egg Care and Causes of death in a snake embrio

[elsuperdavid]

Hello,
I have been breeding for about 5 years. My first two years had 100% hatch rate, but then my 3rd year I lost almost all of my eggs (from 2 different clutches. This year I had 5 females lay eggs, and lost one shorltly after it was laid, and 3 more after the egg had gone full term.

I want to discuss best practices or causes of egg deaths so that I can minimize this in the future.

Egg that died shortly after lay date: The mom was not incubating it, it fell out of her coils when I fed her and she did not pick it back up and put it back in the coils. I checked on her the next day and the egg was still out, so I removed the eggs and incubated them. The egg went bad a few days later.

Out of this same clutch, (5 eggs total) one died right away (described above, then 3 were left, of these three, only one actually hatched, the other two i opened up and one contained a normal, and the other an Ivory BP I was soooo pissed!!!!!
I can take pics when i get home, and post, but one egg also had partial signs of fungus on the inside, the snakes fully developed , made it full term but seems they were not able to break thru the egg? They eggs were on the dry side so maybe the shell was too dry and hard to break thru??

I usually cut my eggs but was away this weekend and came home to this catastrophy.

Some of the eggs developed mold, and when I opened up the egg, it was all solid mushy white stuff, but no traces of snake, or a fully developed snake but it was dead. What are causes of mold and should I somehow clean the eggs after I remove them from the mom? Is it necessary to have the mom in a clean cage? I mean i can't think that in the wild, conditions are sanitized.

What am I doing wrong?

am I missing tips and tricks of the trade here? What is the best way to get the humidity right?, What incubation methods are the best?

Thanks,
David