I have been trying to figure out why my first ever clutch of ball python eggs did so horribly. So I've decided I'm going to re-play the last stretch of the season back in hopes of finding something I did or something that happened that COULD have caused this.

Akina and Xefaud were paired for the first time in late September of 08. I stopped pairing in mid February. On February 23rd, 2009, we had a giant snowstorm and it knocked out power to many parts of the area. We had just started moving our stuff over to the new place and the animals were still at the old apartment. The new place kept its power since we are so close to the hospital but the other apartment lost its power. We found this out when a friend called and said they'd lost power (same apartment complex) and they had gone over to our apartment and checked on the snakes. They said "Oh, and your female shed." I knew this was her pre-lay shed. Immediately after hanging up the phone, we jumped in the car and drove over to the apartment to get all the snakes. There was no way to move the racks and tanks. Our car has a busted back end and you can't open the back hatch, so moving racks would have to wait. We put everyone in pillowcases and brought them over to the new place. We placed them in the closet with a heater aimed at them (it was a moving heater so they were not getting cooked). I know this sounds horrible, but I really had no choice. They stayed in those pillowcases for several days. I took them out for water daily, and when the racks finally got her (friend with a truck brought them over) I was able to set everyone up. Temps were good, all was well.

So she had a pre-lay shed on February 23rd. March came and went. So did April. I was worried for a while but then thought, "maybe she's just not going to give me eggs this season." I went on with my regular cleaning and feeding, and kept trying to feed her every week. On May 4th some friends came over to see my snakes and when I opened Akina's tub there were eggs! I was so excited, but when I went to put my hand in the tub, I didn't feel warmth like I normally do. I put my hand on the bottom of the tub and it was room temperature. Somehow the heat tape had turned off. I later fiddled with the plugs and got it going again (I think one of the outlets stopped working, I just switched which side it was on and it started right up) I'm not sure how long she was without heat. (I have learned my lesson. Always keep a thermometer in the rack!)

Now the incubator was set up with a single strip of flexwatt. I had it hooked up to a thermostat and checked the temperatures every few days. Temps stayed between 87 and 88.5. We had a storm one night and it blew the power out for about 30 minutes. We tapped up the seal on the incubator with duct tape during this time, so I'm pretty sure the temps didn't drop too low. That was about halfway through incubation or a little more than halfway. Closer to the end of incubation, I had humidity issues but fixed that by adding water to the substrate.

Could any of this, or all of it combined possibly cause 3 fertile eggs to die and go bad, one full term baby turn out severely deformed and die in the egg and one baby hatch but be 37g with kinks?