My first clutch...and TOTALLY out of the blue!

Hey, check this story out! I picked up a 1600 gram normal female from Bruce Delles c/o Twin City Reptiles. John Dague of mwreptiles.com (jpman78 on here) picked her out for me when he was up in MN. She's got a great reduced pattern and is a wonderful snake. Bruce said she hadn't bred that year, so I thought next year would be my first try with her.

WRONG!

I came home today and there she was sitting on 4 lovely white eggs and one slug. What a shock! I ran to the store to pick up everything I needed for a makeshift incubator. Luckily, all the advice I've learned on here as well as seeing John Dague's incubation setup firsthand allowed me to quickly determine everything I'd need for an incubator. I'd post pics but I don't have a decent camera as of yet. It's basically a foam cooler with a UTH and Helix DBS1000 running the hot pad. I don't have a fan in there yet...should I get one??

Now I should ask Bruce what he bred her to!

Also, quick question. I candled all four eggs. Three were very clearly fertile with beautiful big blood vessels. The fourth had vessels but they seemed to be more restricted to an area on the top of the egg and didn't penetrate down the sides. Is this one bad?

Also, I put the eggs in the incubator before it had warmed up....the reason I did so was because she laid them right on the hot side and I was worried about them drying out. Was this the wrong thing to do??

JonV

First off CONGRATS :gj:.The last one still might be fertile just a "slow" starter if you will.If it goes bad it will happen within the first 1 or 2 weeks so i would leave it in the incubator.Keep us posted :D

Hey guys, quick question. I set my helix to 89 and it's been warming up for about 6 hours. When I temp-gun, however, everything reads 86. Do you measure surface or air temps in the incubator??

I threw in another thermometer just to see which it agrees with, the temp-gun or the Helix.

JonV

Generally air temps are measured in an incubator.

I have also seen people put the temp kinda in the substrate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nevohraalnavnoj

Hey guys, quick question. I set my helix to 89 and it's been warming up for about 6 hours. When I temp-gun, however, everything reads 86. Do you measure surface or air temps in the incubator??

I threw in another thermometer just to see which it agrees with, the temp-gun or the Helix.

JonV

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I just had a thermometer inside the incubator to read the inside temps.

Inside the incubator or inside the egg boxes??

JonV

Check this out

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ight=incubator

Great thread, thanks for pointing me to that, Patrick! I'm sure I'm just over-analyzing everything at this point and worrying way too much :)

JonV

No worries brudda!!!

wonder what the father was? If your lucky maybe its a cool codom or dom:)