She laid!Maternal incubation.

Well my female pastel from an earlier post finally laid her eggs yesterday. 10 healthy plump eggs. pretty good for a first time girl. I have decided to do maternal incubation for this clutch so i am going to keep this thread updated throughout the process. I have her on cypress mulch to hold humidity better and also added some moist moss to the cage. I pushed the water dish slightly back in the tub so she does not have to move from the eggs to get a drink. I removed her from the eggs to place a temperature and hydrometer probe within the eggs to keep an eye on them accurately. Temp is perfect at 89. I then blocked the holes on the side of the tub to keep in humidity. I checked the eggs by candling to ensure they were all fertile(which they were) and to make sure they had adhered to the tub and each other so that they would not roll. the pictures attached are when i first saw the eggs before this process was done. I will post to this thread as she moves along in the time cycle.
http://mob1077.photobucket.com/album...g?t=1365621245
http://mob1077.photobucket.com/album...g?t=1365621241
also i would add in a word of advice not to try this with females of smaller sizes say under 2000 grams going into the breeding season. I say this because they would not be able to properly cover the eggs as this girl was big at 2400 grams and can just cover her ten eggs. Also she is in the second tub to the top of the rack.

Awesome! Congrats!

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Nice, I've wondered about this processes a bit gonna have to mark this thread :)

I plan on doing maternal incubation when my spider girl lays too. Good on you for making a thread about it! :gj:

Good luck! I hope they do well for you with the maternal incubation!

You removed her to candle and place the probes and she wrapped them again? That's awesome. I didn't know if they'd do that or not.

Best of luck!!

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yes she went right back to guarding the eggs as soon as i put her back. To my understanding as long as the scent is still present they stay in maternal mode which is why breeders clean the female and her tub really good right after they take the eggs away.

Congrats and good luck! That's a lot of eggs!

Alright it has been 10 days since she laid so id figured id do a little update. All eggs still have strong veins and are nice and plump. The temperature fluxuates from 88.4 to 89.6 depending on how she is wrapping the eggs.this is a picture of the bedding. It is half moss half cypress mulch.
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9755ad4e.jpg[/IMG]
This is how the temperature probe hangs ou
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5df9cdde.jpg[/IMG]
And this gives an idea to the humidity(second bin from top).
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps734d8e5b.jpg[/IMG]
On day 7 i misted the FRONT half which is on the opposite of the eggs to add some humidity as one eggs that sits to the outside dimpled ever so slightly.

Very cool thread, very thorough! Glad they're candling well for you and everything.