Tragic first ever clutch

[WindeyD]

My first ever clutch was from a pairing of 2 BELs; the female is a super lesser and the male is a lesser mojave. These two have been bred in the past (not by me) and had healthy clutches. I got 8 eggs and set them up in a Cserpents incubator. My egg box was shoebox size, I used vermiculite with egg crate on top, press and seal and the lid. Temp was a steady 90 degrees and humidity in the egg box was 99%. I rarely opened the incubator, just to put in new clutches and to change the press and seal every 2-3 weeks. The first baby pipped at day 57 and came out of the egg the next day, a healthy 63g female. The rest of the eggs didn't pip and a few started to mold a bit but overall looked good. I decided to cut the rest today (day 63) and the remainder of the clutch were very deformed and 2 were still alive which I had to euthanize. Needless to say very upsetting and heartbreaking. Any ideas as to what went wrong? Any input is appreciated. Thanks

[Bogertophis]

No ideas beyond sheer speculation, but so sorry for your losses. It happens though.

[nikkubus]

I'm so sorry you had such bad results :'(

It's hard to say what happened. I generally don't replace the press and seal unless I have to get in there to remove a moldy egg, but I can't imagine that would cause this unless the eggs were being exposed to cold for too long and the incubator had a hard time bringing the temps back up. It's natural in nature to have some level of fluctuation in temps, but drastic ones could cause problems.

I hope your other clutches are okay. If you do the exact same thing with them as you did with these, a good hatch rate probably means it has something to do with mom or mom and dad, a bad hatch rate probably means something with the incubation process. It may not be that mom shouldn't be bred because she has issues, but there could be some husbandry problem that occurred during her being gravid that caused problems, or even simply that she took too long to lay for whatever reason.

[WindeyD]

Thanks folks, really bummed. At least we got the one healthy female.

[Tila]

Very sorry for your outcome, that is indeed a sad loss.

My guess is that the clutch was incubated too warm. The deformities and failure to hatch seems typical of too high temperatures. Even digitally calibrated instruments have a margin of error and eggs as they are developing produce a bit of their own heat, and I think 90° was probably too hot. For myself I have done a bit of research about incubation temperatures and I was surprised to find bp eggs have a wider range of temps they can be incubated at successfully on the cooler end. I think (appropriately) cooler incubation temperatures should be considered because it's my experience that besides taking a week or so longer to hatch, the babies are much safer and healthier than when pushing the envelope of the upper temperature limits of incubation. For example, I incubate routinely at 87°, and in all 8 clutches at that temp I have an 100% hatch rate of healthy babies that have lived. One year I had an incubation temperature problem and the incubator reached 92° and I had over half of the clutch dead or deformed or both. Others outwardly looked okay, and I have lost track of them at this point, but it taught me an unfortunate valuable lesson about the upper limits of temp.

I hope this is helpful to you and again I am sorry for your loss.

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