Upside Down Egg Experiment

[adamjeffery]

Actually someone tried this over a decade ago. I cannot remember what species they tried it with, but they used many eggs, turning some immediately, some partway through incubation, etc. The article was published in Reptiles magazine (I believe--at the time, Reptile and Amphibian and the Vivarium were still running).

Henry Dean did this experiment years ago. i think he used corns but maybe milks.
as a side note for corns in general i had my entire incubator knocked on the ground and the 25 or 26 eggs inside it had flipped 180. they were 1 month into incubation. my mother (who flipped it) tried to hide the fact that they flipped and put everything back together backwards(180). so 2 days later when i got home i noticed right off the bat.
ALL BABIED HATCHED WITH A 100% SURVIVAL RATE
i understand that this proves nothing
adam jeffery

[adamjeffery]

although reptile eggs are laid normally in or under something. they do get moved. they are constantly getting dug up by every mammal with a nose and many eggs get distroyed, those that werent usually survive to hatch, thats why many reptiles lay numerous eggs and/or many clutches(turtles)
adam jeffery

[muddoc]

Just another note on the secong egg experiment. I have cut the second egg, and it is a normal that looks fine. It should be hatching this week. I will post up a pic as soon as it emerges.

p.s. Adam, thanks for the extra info, and for adding it to this post. I think it will prove invaluable for people that read this in the future.

[frankykeno]

Thanks for this thread, Tim. It's been invaluable following along and I think reassuring to a lot of us that may have had an egg roll accidentally that all may not be lost. Lovely hatchlings you got out of those eggs too.

[adamjeffery]

i emailed henry dean trying to find his web site and he replied saying that he removed the website.he did however send me an email of what he had posted on his site. im going to cut and paste the entire email on here for everyone else to read.

here it is:
sorry it took so long. had to find it saved on a floppy since my site is ober now.

EGGS - I live in a warm climate and my snake rooms are kept between 78-82 degrees. I don't use incubators since they are unnecessary here. You may live in a cooler region and warm each cage seperately so my method may not be for you. I just use a plastic shoe box with a few small holes in the lid. I put an inch of very damp large size vermiculite as a substrate and place the eggs on the vermiculite and put the plastic shoe box on a top shelf in the room which is 82 degrees or so. If the eggs are laid in a pile, I never try and seperate them. I just use a strip of wax paper with a few slits in it and place it over the top of the eggs so the humidity will stay high on the eggs at the top of the pile. I don't worry about the ratio of water to vermiculite. I just use very damp vermiculite. I don't think you can go wrong as long as the eggs aren't standing in water. The purpose of the vermiculite is to retain moisture yet allow air exchange around the egg. This is why I like the large vermiculite since I feel it allows more air exchange around the egg. Probably doesn't matter since I know people that completely bury their eggs and hatch them all just fine. I used to use damp paper towels as an egg medium and they worked great but you have to keep misting them almost daily so I like the low maintenance of vermiculite. I have also used spagnum moss but found flying bugs after several weeks of damp moss so I don't use it any more.
Some people seem to worry about bad eggs next to good ones and end up destroying good eggs trying to remove bad ones or by using chemicals to clean mold off good ones. Don't worry about bad moldy eggs if they are attached to a pile of eggs. Good eggs are very hardy.

You need to candle the eggs when they are layed to see which ones are good. Just use a pen light in the dark and put it up against the egg and you should see veins if it is good. Good eggs will have veins in them. They may have veins almost immediately after being layed yet I have had it take a week for them to show up good. Some eggs layed look great but aren't fertile. They will candle as no veins. I believe this is where people got the idea that a bad egg next to this good looking one caused this good looking one to go bad. That so called good looking one wasn't any good to start with. I candle my eggs. I've seen a pile of eggs where I knew which ones where infertile because of no veins seen. These eggs looked great for weeks but sooner or later they started getting moldy and turned black. These were right up against eggs I knew were good. The good ones hatched with none going bad because of the bad black moldy ones attached to it.

I have always found that snake eggs are very tough and this is how nature designed them. If a predator came upon a clutch and tearing through the eggs eating several but leaving the others laying around disturbed them from their original laying position it seemed wrong that the other eggs wouldn't hatch. Snakes have been around for a long time and it would figure that their eggs aren't that fragile or how else could they continue to survive and thrive.

I decided to started an experiment using 4 good snake eggs(veins when candled). I wanted to know if turning snake eggs would hurt them. I know there is no reason to turn snake eggs and I don't recommend it but I was curious if all the talk about turning snakes eggs making them go bad was just as incorrect as most other don'ts such as (don't touch them with your bare hands, keep them at 100% humidity, don't let moldy eggs stay attached to good ones, keep at a constant temperature, etc). Most of these don'ts have proven to be false and are used as excuses when eggs go bad. Some just go bad and some were never fertilized even though they looked good. Things happen.

I started with 4 eggs from a Leucistic Texas Rat Snake that were layed on 6-28-99. I waited until I could candle all 4 eggs and see great veins in them. I decided to turn the eggs at different stages to see if it would hurt them. All were turned and none were to be at their original layed postion when hatching. Following is the turning schedule.

EGG ONE-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one half turn to the right and never bothered it again.

EGG TWO-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one quarter turn to the right and I turned it one quarter turn to the right every week until 8-21-99 with it being turned one and three quarters turns total.

EGG THREE--I turned this egg one half turn to the right on 8-4-99 about one half the way through incubation and never bothered it again.

EGG FOUR-- On 7-7-99 I turned this egg one half turn to the right and on 8-4-99 one half turn to the right again and on 8-21-99 one half turn to the right again for a total of one and one half total times.

All four eggs hatched on 9-4-99 with 4 perfect males.

Even though this grouping is too small for any real scientific findings it does show that in this case using Luecistic Texas Rat Snake eggs that turning them at these times did no harm.




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Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2009 15:18:13 -0500
From:
To:
Subject: havnt heard from ya in a while aka farfrumugen


hey henry,
i was talking to some folks on another forum about the experiment you did years ago with rotating snake eggs.
i know you had the whole thing posted on your website, but i cant remember what the address was and the bookmark is on my old hard drive.
if you could send me the address it would be appreciative.
im not so into hybrids anymore i still have 3 or 4, but after years of eggs going bad and females actually being males and retarded deaths im just getting sick of the project.
so what has been new for you? anything crazy hatch out?
well keep in touch.
ill try and hook up my old hard drive but email me the link either way.
thank you
adam jeffery

[muddoc]

Thanks for the post Adam.

I also wanted to note that the last egg I turned after 56 hours, hatched fine. I do have a pic, and I should be posting it later tonight.

As for Jamie's request, I did not have a clutch laid after his request that I was capable of flipping an egg after two weeks. However, I will attempt this experiment next year.

[barakujang]

Thanks for the post


I think it very useful for anyone who make egg rolled after snake laid her eggs.

Awesome your experiment
Thanks again
Jessada