Incubating?

I've read several breeding "how to"s, and everyone talks about using an incubator. I was wondering if there is something wrong with letting the female incubate the eggs herself or not.

The reason im asking is, This coming up season i may try to breed my female normal and it will be my first time attempting to breed.

I don't have any information to give you on this, but I was wondering the same thing just now and was considering making a thread, but we don't need two of the same topic.
I hope you get some good answers. :3 Good luck.(However I don't know if I actually plan on breeding my female in a few years)

The problems with maternal incubation is the female won't eat and will rarely leave the eggs to drink. the temp and humidity can be controlled better in an incubator than a tub and the eggs have different requirements than the snake. Eggs need 100% humidity and 89* and the snake needs less humidity and a hotter hot spot. a lot of people have had success maternally incubating but its better and healthier to separate them and get the female eating again and relieve some stress

Pm Quiet Tempest. She knows it all on maternal Inc. From what I've seen on her threads she has no problem getting females to eat while maternally incubating. Excellent person to inquire about this!


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Yes it can successfully be done, snakes have been doing it themselves long before we started keeping them as pets.

Moms will eat while on eggs. Here are three of my girls feeding while on their clutches this year..

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3383/img5491u.jpg

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5997/img6216p.jpg

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/600/img6666sl.jpg


It's not unusual for them to skip a meal here or there but if they feel hungry and you offer a meal, they will gladly accept it. :)

I would say for anyone interested in maternal incubation, it's definitely worthwhile. I'm biased, though. ;)

Quite Tempest- you don't have any problem maternal incubating? I'd definitely try that if I ever bred snakes because that IS how they do it in the wild. Though incubation wouldn't be hard either, I'd be scared I might mess up the eggs or something moving them to the incubator. XD (Just don't rotate them, right?) I still have many years before that and I doubt my parents would let me breed my snake anyway. XD

Thank you Quiet Temptest. Very much appreciated, IF i breed this season, i will probably let her incubate them herself and just keep a very watchful eye on them.

My track record with artificial incubators is lousy. When I've put eggs in an incubator, I almost always lose at least one egg. :oops: I feel much more comfortable letting the moms brood the eggs. So far I haven't lost any babies through maternal incubation. I did have a kinked baby in one of my clutches this year but that's just as likely to happen when artificially incubating.

I don't fret over rolled or turned eggs, either. I had an egg last year that rolled out twice from the nest. I had no idea what position it had been while in the egg pile (that clutch just didn't "glue" together like eggs normally do) and I was pulling my hair out with worry over that egg. It hatched out perfectly fine, though, and then I found the egg turning experiments that were carried out by members here on BP.net so I've not worried about rolled or turned eggs since.

ive never bred before, but my outlook on it followed that of Ilovelace, i figured, in the wild she would incubate her own eggs, and would know alot better whats best for them than i would so, all i should do is provide her with what she needs to do it herself. However, i hadn't heard of anyone that actually did maternal incubation, all i had read was people doing artificial or whatever its called so...didnt know if i should follow suit.

But, seeing how you do maternal and have great success rates with it, i think that is what i prefer to do :)