corn egg questions // URGENT help needed!!!!!

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Got my first clutch of 21 eggs yesterday. I have them on moist vermiculite... and set at 82 degrees. the vermiculite is as moist as the traditonal BP setup.... when i grab a handfull and squeeze it sticks together, but it is not wet enough for water to drop. I also have a water bowl in the tub to keep the humidity up.

Question is this.... the eggs were all perfectly round yesterday but today most of them have small to medium sized dents in them. Is this normal? There is no way the humidity is too low with the moist vermiculite and the bowl of water.

Camera battery is charging, will post pics when it is done. Please HELP asap so I can make whatever changes are necessary before I loose them!!!

Mike

[wilomn]

It's not unusual at all. Some eggs don't stay round, they actually have slight dip in them. Most will stay ovoid in shape but don't worry if a couple don't.

Add a bit of water to your bedding and reseal your container or just spray them off with water that is about the same temp.

When I ran really big incubators I used to keep a couple of spray bottles right in the incubator so that any batch that looked a little on the dry side could be misted.

Don't worry though, it's all normal stuff from what you've written.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

The pictures:

last night:



5 minutes ago:

[wilomn]

Spray em down, cover em up and keep em warm.

Babies in 57 days.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Thanks wilomn! I have a spray bottle of water warming up now!

I always heard with ball python eggs that you never want to get water directly on them because bad things happen.... But it is ok to spray correct temperature water directly on corn eggs?

[wilomn]

There's a thread about that somewhere here.

I believe the general consensus was that dripping water, a non-stop drip, is bad for ball eggs but that an occasional spritzing is ok. I've sprayed many a clutch and had no problems.

I've sprayed hundreds of corn clutches over the years and have hatched a ton of corns. I've never had a problem that I could attribute to eggs being sprayed with water that wasn't too hot or too cold and even then I've only heard stories from others, not seen it first hand.

But, if you really don't want to spray them, add a half cup of water to your bedding, just pour it in, then reseal the box and wait a day. If the eggs are still dimpled a bit, repeat. Shouldn't need to do that more than a couple of times.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

Nope, your advice is good enough for me. in a couple hours when the water gets to temp I will spray away!

[Blue Apple Herps]

I personally don't spray them directly. I'd just cover them up with the vermiculite. I do this with corn eggs anyways, so that they're completely covered, then I spray the medium as needed. Once a week, a scrape some of the vermiculite off to check on the eggs and see how their plumpness is. You should be fine.

[PythonWallace]

I know that Wes has a lot more experience than me with corns, but kind of like BAP said, I used to incubate my corn eggs completely covered in barely damp sphagnum moss. I'd place the eggs on top of 1 1/2" of the damp sphagnum in an air tight container, then loosely cover them with another 1/2" of the barely damp sphagnum, only checking them every 1-2 weeks for air exchange. I didn't have any issues. You can also do substrateless incubation, like you do with with ball python eggs, to take out the guess work and worry. As long as the humidity is in the 90s, without letting the eggs sit in overly wet conditions, I wouldn't worry about dimpling too much.

[mechnut450]

my few corn eggs aer dented like that i am not worried abotu them my bp eggs did great and were dented too. I do have my eggs sitinbg on a light disfuser like my bpeggs so as not to allow a wet spot/stain on the eggs. I knowe whow my cor neggs will make out about the end of may first week in june . I only got 7 to deal with lol so I am not too worried.