First eggs of 2013!

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Originally Posted by DJF1990

Have any of your females ever laid the clutch directly on the heat source its self? If so how would you go about relocating the female and clutch away from the heat source if you wanted to continue maternally incubation? Also have you ever noticed an increase in deformities or Premature births maternally incubating compared to artificial? Thanx for all the info as well everyone great thread!

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We heat our room to 85F and do not provide supplemental heat in the racks, so we don't have a heat source to worry about. But, I have had to move a female during incubation because I had aspen for substrate and it started to mold. We took mom and eggs out, changed bedding and put them back. She went back on the eggs just fine.

We have not had any problems with deformities or premature births. With the 85F temp, we do see longer hatching times...typically 60-79 days. But, our average hatchling weight has been higher. Last year they ranged from 70g to 98g, with most between 80g and 90g.

One important note: do not cut the eggs if you are maternally incubating. If you must cut, move them to the incubator. If you cut and leave the eggs with mom, the pressure from her coiling will squeeze the liquid out. Once they pip on their own, it doesn't matter, and the female usually loosens up at that point anyway. But if you were to cut early and leave them with the female you could lose the babies.

Congrats and good luck Shari!

Regards,

B

We don't use egg chambers, just the tub in the rack, a large water dish and cypress bedding. We have heat tape along the bottom of every shelf in the rack and so far all 3 girls have layed their eggs on the tub directly over the heat tape. I don't move them except to weigh and candle them and I always try to put them back right where mom had them.

Thanks Brian!

Both clutches last year where all healthy babies that weighted from 65-77g and both piped right about day 58 through 60 for us.

So. June 25th Ivy had her pre-lay shed so we finally have some kind of timeline for all this years clutches.

And then we waited on Sara. Finally 36 days pre-lay we have eggs! Sara (Normal)X Loki (Yellowbelly). Looks like 6 nice big eggs July 3rd! Man she is crabby!

Next one up is Taki due around July 17th. And Lulu's eggs will be half way done on the 15th, silly snakes!
http://i1201.photobucket.com/albums/...psd79aef2c.jpg

Congrats!

Update; Lulu's eggs are well over the half way mark, we are expecting them to hatch about August 14th! Sadly one of the eggs went bad so we are down to 4 eggs from her but the rest are looking great and are getting so close!

Sara's 6 eggs all still look good and are quickly closing in on their halfway mark. Mama ate after the first week and is crabby and hungry, we are super glad she is eating for us again and has taken her second meal.

Ivy layed 6 beautiful eggs for us July 25th, right on schedule! We will attempt to remove her, weigh her and the eggs, check her health and feed her tomorrow or Sunday.

Taki was slow developing her follicles this year, we thought she was ahead of Ivy but as we kept checking them Ivy pulled ahead. She shed again the 12th of July and her follicles are much bigger so we are guessing that was her prelay, considering she got much lighter as well we might be right this time. So we hope to get eggs from her on August 14th, same day Lulu's eggs should hatch!

So, we have 3 clutches incubating with a total so far of 16 good eggs and we are still waiting on one more clutch. I'll update again when we have eggs hatching or more eggs layed, whichever comes first!

http://i1201.photobucket.com/albums/...psf45536f4.jpg

Woohoo! Congrats on all of them!

Day 51 on Lulu's clutch. Just checked them and figured I would share :D

http://i1201.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7b19b880.jpg

Congradulations! It's always exciting when the females lay, the most fun part is the anticipation!

Personally, I don't think I can do the maternal incubation. Too many things can go wrong and in most cases it seems that more eggs are lost per clutch on average.