Pastel Butter x Spider (Maternal Incubation)

[meowmeowkazoo]

Thanks for that post, it has some excellent advice in it that I wish I had seen before I attempted this, LOL.

I realize that me documenting every little concern and fear I had may make maternal incubation seem complicated and risky, but my purpose in doing that was simply so that other people who might experience the same fears would be a little reassured that somebody else has gone through it, and so that any mistakes I made could be learned from.

I went through your list and added a few comments that might help people reading the thread, as well.

1. With Charlotte, I added the substrate shortly before she was due to lay eggs, and this seemed to work fairly well. I simply made a large circle of "blank" space for her to lay the eggs on, although next time I may just leave a large square in the back of the tub for her instead.

2. Humidity is tricky, and I get the feeling that your humidity in North Carolina is a fair amount higher than my humidity is in Utah. I think it's pretty important for everyone who wants to try MI to see where their snake room is at as far as humidity goes. Generally too much humidity will be worse for the eggs than too little, but I also think that my low humidity made the shells on two of the eggs a bit too tough for the hatchlings to break out of. It's important to get the humidity figured out BEFORE the female lays eggs, otherwise you'll spend the entire time battling it like I did.

3. While I knew that females can go without food while they incubate, a big part of the reason I offered food was because people said they "won't" eat while on eggs, and I wanted to prove that wrong. The other reason was because I wanted Charlotte to have that extra energy after 60 days of not eating and then laying the eggs. It was pretty neat to see how she hunted prey without leaving or harming the eggs.

And yeah, it was very hard not to worry, especially because of my struggles keeping the humidity high enough. There's not a lot of information available on maternal incubation, so I was largely playing it by ear. You should consider making a thread on your experience with MI with some pictures. It would be very helpful to people, I'm sure.