She laid!Maternal incubation.

I'm also interested in this thread. Please document everything as best you can, I'm sure we would all love it

As I'm thinking of going the maternal incubation route, I'll definitely also be keeping an eye out! Don't forget to keep us updated.

day 20 update and theres trouble in paradise. One of the eggs id not doing as good as the others and looks squished but still has good veinsBut what has me concerned is the fact that mama doesnt quite like her role as mom anymore. I find she is almost never completly on the eggs anymore and is never coiled around them like she once was. I will be keeping a special eye on all of them. more updates as things change.

We had close to 30 clutches last year, and were able to maternally incubate all but one (one female never showed any interest in her eggs). I wouldn't necessarily get too worried about the egg that looks squished. Maternally incubated eggs don't always look as pretty as those kept in the incubator, but they seem to turn out fine anyway.

As far as mom leaving the eggs, we noticed that some of our females seemed more inclined to leave their eggs than others. From what I could tell, there seemed to be two reasons for females to move off the eggs even though they were not close to hatching. One thing is stress. We have a few shyer girls that would leave the eggs if we checked on them too much, or if there was lots of activity in the snake room. The other trigger seemed to be temps. We are in FL, so sometimes during hot summer days the ambient temp in our room gets a little hotter than normal. This seemed to cause especially the females in the top tubs where it's warmest to take a break from sitting on the eggs. But, the eggs seemed to be fine, though, since the temps and humidity in the tubs were pretty close to what an incubator would be.

we are at day 55 right now and i thought it would be the perfect time to sum up all that has happened. I started off with 10 eggs but two started to "die off" around day 20. I know it is normal to lose eggs and everything in the cage was perfect so i removed one egg that went bad as momma kindly pushed it out of the nest, while the other remained out of reach under the rest of eggs. On day 39 the unthinkable tragic event happened that claimed the life of three more eggs. I was away and my mom was taking care of the snakes for the weekend. she Noticed the mommas water dish was full of substrate and was very nasty so she put some water in a deli cup until she had time to clean the dish. Hours later she noticed the deli cup got knocked over and soaked all of the eggs on the bottom. She soaked up what she could with a towel at the time. When i got home the next day i did what i could to get rid of the remaining water without disturbing things too much. I put vermiculite in all the cracks around the eggs to soak up some water. Sadly after all my efforts three eggs went bad a few days later. This left me with 5 beautiful eggs, which started to pip today! Momma snake is FREAKING OUT! she is totally confused and flinging herself about. so i dint think I'm going to get one of those cute pictures of mom with the babies.[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps59ed4720.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...psbe532a95.jpg[/IMG]
First baby appears to be a lesser.I tried to get in close on his little head.

Are those little lesser noses?? SO freaking cute!

yes cute little lessors so far. One other baby pipped and looks to be pastel lesser but i couldn't get a good look as he popped back in his egg when i got closer.

So everyone pipped as of last night but momma snake was causing destruction as she was squishing babies out of their eggs. So i took them out and put them on wet paper towels. I peeked into all the eggs and saw 2 lessors, 1 pastel(thought super pastel at first) and a sets of twins that appeared at least lesser and a very small baby lesser or pastel lesser. Unfortunatly the mother snake caused some damage to the twin egg and both hatchling perished last night They were only 22 grams a piece. The small baby was laying half out of the egg this morning and looked limp. I cut the egg to see what was wrong and noticed he had a hard yoke sac AND there was a dead twin snake in the egg that appeared to have died awhile back(very gross looking) so i tied of the cord and gave him some yoke and hoped for the best. Sadly he passed just now. This leaves me with 3 healthy babies with which i am more than pleased with. [IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...psa381b836.jpg[/IMG]This is the pastel which i first thought was a super as i did but a pastel to the mom swell but at second look i see just a beautiful little pastel.
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps75792bc0.jpg[/IMG]This is one of the lessors and the dead twin.
[IMG]http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0c653ef3.jpg[/IMG]This is the poor little dead twin.Although he passed he taught me a lot. He was only 19 grams. His yoke weighed more than him.
The lessors are 66 grams and look great. Just waiting on the pastel.And my next two clutches to drop.
EDIT: i didn't think to get pictures of the first set of twins

This is awesome, and a great thread! Thanks for sharing with us all!

I'm sorry to hear about some of the babies, too... but this is still a great and very informative thread....