First Pips of the year.

[kellysballs]

This year I am preforming a research project on my ball pythons. We are using two incubators and incubating at 91F and 86F to see if their are any differences in vigor, incubation time, size, sex or growth rate in the first 30 days between the hatchlings incubated at the different temps. We are splitting each clutch into part A 86F incubation and part B 91F incubation.

I weighed the bone dry vermiculite 280g and added 366g water for each clutch. I like this level of wetness normally but I would normally adjust through out incubation as needed for each clutch. But with this experiment it is a constant so I can't change it. But it is alittle wet and the eggs in the 86F have not even started to dimple because they have absorbed alot of water. So when the babies pipped in 91F incubator last night I placed 1in slits in the 86F eggs to allow alittle of the albumin to leak out so the babies can emerge when they want to.

Ok so there's the background, anyway last night the eggs incubated at 91F pipped on day 59 and the first pipper was an albino. After checking the other eggs we have 1 het and 4 albinos from a het to albino pairing!



I will post more pics to come. If anyone is interested in the outcome of this project it will be running until the last hatchling of the season is 30days old so pm me and i will put you on an email list for the final write up. I hope that the science will be good enough that I can publish it.

[jarradw]

Congrats. I love me some albinos

[Quiet Tempest]

Congrats on the pips.

But isn't placing slits in the eggs of group B going to interfere with your experiment? You won't know now when they would have actually begun dimpling and hatching on their own because you've intervened.

[kellysballs]

Congrats on the pips.

But isn't placing slits in the eggs of group B going to interfere with your experiment? You won't know now when they would have actually begun dimpling and hatching on their own because you've intervened.

In short yes but only for this replicate. However the day this half of the group slit there eggs enough to emerge I will have some sort of idea when to expect the other guys incubated at 86f. I have never incubated at this low of a temp. Before and I have also never been restricted on the moisture of the vermiculite.

[ShiffyAME]

Interesting project, I cant wait to see what the final results are on the time difference it takes them to come out of their eggs! Congrats on hitting the odds with the albinos as well!

[SlitherinSisters]

Congrats!

[kellysballs]

Okay so the cool incubator babies slit their eggs enough to emerge on June 18th. 8 days after the other half of this clutch in the warm incubator. They "pipped" on day 67 at 86 degrees.
The 2nd clutch of this year was het axanthic to pastel axanthic. In the warm incubator 4 eggs from this clutch pipped on june 15th. We got 0.3 axanthics and 1.0 pastel 100% het. They pipped on day 58. So the cool half of this clutch is on day 62 with no pips yet.

[kellysballs]

Update:

12 Clutches laid so far.

6 clutches Have hatched.

Average time to hatch in incubator A (86F) 66.6 days
Average mass of hatchling from A 64.48g
Average length from A 42.91cm
10 Hatchlings 8 female (80%)

Average time to hatch incubator B (91F) 59.4 days
Average mass of hatchling from B 68.06g
Average length of hatchling from B 41.44
17 hatchlings 10 female (58.8%)

[Ch^10]

^^ Thanks for the data! And congrats on the clutches!

[seang89]

I love when people post this type of info. Have you experimented with temperature fluctuations within the said ranges? Gradual temp changes of course.