What are your views of momma keeping eggs?

im possibly adopting a pregnant BP from a man who doesnt take care of them. I dont have an incubator but i do have a rack with plenty of room for her. Anybody had luck with eggs without using an incubator?

IMO it's more work to do maternal incubation. I haven't given it a shot yet, but may try it some season. If your rack maintains good temps, she coils her eggs nicely, and you provide adequate humidity, you'll likely have success. These snakes know what they're doing, so as long as they have what they need, maternal incubation is a fine choice.

You should find something by searching for maternal incubation here on this site...there have been a few threads about it...don't recall them having any issues...would be cool to do once...

awesome. i will look around :)

You might lose 1-2 eggs if she moves and rolls them over, that's the one problem I've heard people have had with Maternal incubation!

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Originally Posted by pamby13

im possibly adopting a pregnant BP from a man who doesnt take care of them. I dont have an incubator but i do have a rack with plenty of room for her. Anybody had luck with eggs without using an incubator?

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If he doesnt take care of them what is the possibility that she is gravid? They need proper temps, feeding, ect. in order to build follicles and then eggs.

I would say it's more work/skill to have the mom incubate them than use an incubator. You need an excellent thermostat either route you choose. If you have a friend that can incubate them, that would be the best option. Otherwise, it's not that hard to make your own incubator out of a drink cooler or an old refrigerator. There are lots of threads on maternal incubation if you want to try it, or making your own incubator.

Some members here allow maternal incubation and have no problems. The issues I have seen come up most often is this... Female will not eat while incubating. She has already been off food for weeks or months so allowing maternal incubation will most likely keep her off food for 2 additional months..

Scale rot.. Common along the inside of the body where she is tightly wrapped around the eggs. Humidity is high here and sometimes the female will get sores before the eggs hatch..

Loss of any eggs that are not receiving even temperatures and proper humidity..

Having an egg go bad and not seeing it inside the coils..

These are just the negative aspects but if the temperature inside the enclosure is correct and humidity is maintained, female snakes are usually very good at taking care of their own eggs.

It is just a personal choice where you need to weigh the pros and cons along with your own resources at the time.

Having Momma cook her own eggs will usually cause the Momma to take more time to get back up to weight. She may not breed next year.

Good Luck!
Jim Smith

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Originally Posted by Foschi Exotic Serpents

Some members here allow maternal incubation and have no problems. The issues I have seen come up most often is this... Female will not eat while incubating. She has already been off food for weeks or months so allowing maternal incubation will most likely keep her off food for 2 additional months..

Scale rot.. Common along the inside of the body where she is tightly wrapped around the eggs. Humidity is high here and sometimes the female will get sores before the eggs hatch..

Loss of any eggs that are not receiving even temperatures and proper humidity..

Having an egg go bad and not seeing it inside the coils..

These are just the negative aspects but if the temperature inside the enclosure is correct and humidity is maintained, female snakes are usually very good at taking care of their own eggs.

It is just a personal choice where you need to weigh the pros and cons along with your own resources at the time.

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What temperatures and humidity do the eggs typically need to be kept at?

Eggs are kept almost like the adults are. Temps at 88-90.f also humidity needs to be at 90-100%. If you are going to leave the eggs with mom you will most likely have an issue keeping the humidity right. I have a rack and I still need to spray everyone down to keep up humidity. Mom could also have health issues because of staying coiled around her eggs like the above poster said. My opinion is to take the eggs and hatch them in an incubator. Any farm store has still air chicken incubators for 50.00 invest in that it will be the best for babies and mommy.

I've left all my ball clutches with the mothers and let them maternally incubate. I haven't had any egg losses this way but I've only had a total of 4 clutches in the past two years. The only issue that I had while maternally incubating was last year when I had a clutch of snowflaked eggs and one rolled out of the pile twice when the mom would leave to eat or drink. I put the egg back in the pile and it hatched out along with its siblings without any problems.

I have learned, however, that the age old assumption that females will not eat while maternally incubating is complete rubbish. The first year I tried maternal incubation, I didn't feed my female because of all the misinformation out there. I corrected my error last year and of the three females I had maternally incubating, one ate on a weekly basis and the other two ate more sporadically every 2-3 weeks (feeder size I offered while they were brooding was rat weanling to sm rat). Contrary to popular belief, the females don't exert a great deal of energy while brooding so there isn't a great deal of weight loss in females who choose to eat only a few meals or none at all and weight gain can be expected of the females who continue to eat regularly while maternally incubating.

Maternal incubation isn't for everyone but it has worked consistently for me. I've found I have lousy luck using artificial incubators. I've lost eggs in incubators whereas I haven't lost any eggs yet while maternally incubating. I plan to allow all of my girls to maternally incubate their clutches again this year. Once I have a decent camera back in my possession I'll be taking pics of the girls on their clutches and candling the eggs throughout the process again like I did last year.

My opinion, is why risk it? It is easy and cheap to build an incubator, especially one for only a few clutches.

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Originally Posted by Wh00h0069

My opinion, is why risk it? It is easy and cheap to build an incubator, especially one for only a few clutches.

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Just curious, what you think you're risking by going the maternal route?

yeah, in the desert here, humidity is the opposite concern. You want as close to 99% humidity as you can get, but you DON'T want the eggs to actually come into contact with moisture.

I really want to try maternal incubation, but I'll probably chicken out and make my own incubator out of a cooler. And that's mostly about humidity/moisture--if I get the humidity up to 90%+, moisture will bead on Mom's tub. And the eggs will probably wind up on the bottom of the tub, in contact with the plastic... and then maybe she'll splash in her water bowl and there will be some water on the bottom of the tub... and meanwhile I'll still be paying the money for a good thermostat to avoid heat spikes.

I still want to try it some time. But I think in the long run, the incubator is easier.

You don't want to bump the humidity up so high in a brooding female's enclosure. From the little experience I've had with this, you don't want humidity dropping below 60% and you don't want it climbing much higher than 80%. Keeping things so wet in an enclosure can cause problems with your female, like bacterial infections and belly rot.

The female can regulate the humidity within her coils as long as her enclosure's humidity isn't too high or too low. If she feels that the humidity is low, she may leave her clutch to soak in her water bowl before returning or she could urinate in her nest and get the same effect, boosting the humidity within her coils. Too much keeper interference can cause problems. All you need to do is provide a gravid female with the same conditions you'd be providing any other ball (conditions that encourage intact sheds, healthy appetite and normal behavior) and she can do the rest. You just keep tabs on her, provide clean drinking water, and offer food periodically. The only difference being that she'll be guarding a pile of eggs so you shouldn't be removing her from her enclosure unless absolutely necessary - this because she'll likely be moody and you don't want to make her feel that her nest is unsafe and abandon her clutch.

Very interesting stuff quiet tempest. I myself haven't tried maternal incubation. Although I think it's awesome to see moms caring for Thier broods. I think in each case pros and cons should be weighed out. But I think it's quite cool to see someone on the other side of the fence. I like the still airs and I suppose that's because I want access to both mom and babies whenever and don't want to risk a mother abandoning the clutch. But congrats to you for trying the more natural route. 

It's certainly worth trying if you've never done it before if only to gain the experience. I've incubated eggs both ways but I've had a lot more luck going the natural route. When I researched it, I learned that the eggs are less prone to desiccation when left to the care of their mother so perhaps that played into my success with maternal and losses with artificial incubation. I don't really know for sure. Losing otherwise healthy eggs is like a kick in the head for me and I'm not willing to artificially incubate unless I absolutely have to for fear of losing even a single egg. I'm still new to breeding, having only started a couple years ago, but of the four ball clutches I've had so far, each had 100% hatch rates and were all maternally incubated. The python eggs I incubated artificially came from a jungle carpet python. She gave me 9 healthy eggs but one of them died about two weeks into incubation. I have to wonder if it would have survived had I let the jcp mom do her job.

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Originally Posted by Domepiece

If he doesnt take care of them what is the possibility that she is gravid? They need proper temps, feeding, ect. in order to build follicles and then eggs.

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She is definately Gravid. all the sure tail signs . Shes ovulated already and has started building. Shes DEF got some babies in her :)

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Originally Posted by Quiet Tempest

I've left all my ball clutches with the mothers and let them maternally incubate. I haven't had any egg losses this way but I've only had a total of 4 clutches in the past two years. The only issue that I had while maternally incubating was last year when I had a clutch of snowflaked eggs and one rolled out of the pile twice when the mom would leave to eat or drink. I put the egg back in the pile and it hatched out along with its siblings without any problems.

I have learned, however, that the age old assumption that females will not eat while maternally incubating is complete rubbish. The first year I tried maternal incubation, I didn't feed my female because of all the misinformation out there. I corrected my error last year and of the three females I had maternally incubating, one ate on a weekly basis and the other two ate more sporadically every 2-3 weeks (feeder size I offered while they were brooding was rat weanling to sm rat). Contrary to popular belief, the females don't exert a great deal of energy while brooding so there isn't a great deal of weight loss in females who choose to eat only a few meals or none at all and weight gain can be expected of the females who continue to eat regularly while maternally incubating.

Maternal incubation isn't for everyone but it has worked consistently for me. I've found I have lousy luck using artificial incubators. I've lost eggs in incubators whereas I haven't lost any eggs yet while maternally incubating. I plan to allow all of my girls to maternally incubate their clutches again this year. Once I have a decent camera back in my possession I'll be taking pics of the girls on their clutches and candling the eggs throughout the process again like I did last year.

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How do you keep your humidity up? Do you spray constantly? Have you had any issues with scale rot ?

I personally would just use an incubator. I wouldn't breed until I had one setup and running properly. There is a reason the all pro's use them. You are taking all the variables out of it if you setup an incubator properly. Building one is first on my list to do before I even contemplate breeding. I am OCD about doing stuff right so you can bet that it will be up and running flawlessly before I stick my first clutch in there! :) Good luck, I hope it works out for you whichever way you decide to go.

Regards,

B

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Originally Posted by pamby13

How do you keep your humidity up? Do you spray constantly? Have you had any issues with scale rot ?

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With my tubs, I don't want the humidity climbing much higher than say 80%. Trying to turn a female's enclosure into an incubator is just asking for trouble. The only reason you would need to mist the enclosure/tub of a brooding female would be if your humidity is dipping to the point that your snake has issues shedding or is dehydrating. I use cypress bedding and it holds humidity really well. I only mist my snakes when I'm trying to encourage them to breed, otherwise I don't see the need.

I've never had any issues with bacterial infections or scale/belly rot on any of my snakes. You don't want your snakes kept on wet bedding or have condensation building up to the point that it's dripping on them. If things are that wet, you would need to tweak the enclosure long before eggs were in the equation.

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Originally Posted by Quiet Tempest

Just curious, what you think you're risking by going the maternal route?

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Because in an incubator you have a very controlled environmoent. It is tougher to create this in an open room. Eggs may die if conditions are not met.

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Originally Posted by Wh00h0069

Because in an incubator you have a very controlled environmoent. It is tougher to create this in an open room. Eggs may die if conditions are not met.

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If eggs were left unattended or neglected (read: not coiled and guarded) by their mother, yes they'd surely die but if you're keeping your balls' enclosure properly and you have a female with good maternal instincts then leaving the eggs with her for a few days or for the entire duration of incubation does not mean certain death for the clutch.

I'm not trying to dissuade your preferred method of incubating eggs. Only trying to dispel some of the misinformation that gets stirred up on the topic.

If you haven't read it, this was definitely a worthwhile study comparing brooded eggs and artificially incubated eggs and their subsequent hatchlings:
http://www.rcreptiles.com/articles/w...their-eggs.pdf

Worked well for me.

http://snakemorphs.com/images/MaternalHatch2003Med.jpg

100% hatch rate and she ate well and produced again the next year.

I'm in Colorado and used lots of sphagnum moss to keep humidity up.