I've had these 2 piebald eggs in my incubator for the last 60 days. I expected they were fertile as they had veins when I candled them within a few days of putting them in the incubator.
Yesterday I candled them again because they hadn't hatched yet. I saw a really clear egg with some veins. Basically it looked the same like when I candled them weeks ago. I figured something must have gone wrong during incubation and the embryos never fully developed for some reason. I wanted to cut them open to see what was inside, but it was too late to do this dirty work last night.
Tonight I cut one open and was disturbed to see what looked like a healthy snake inside. It was a high white pied and that's why it didn't look like much when I candled it. I poked it around and it didn't move. Lots of "egg white" liquid came out. I poked some more to move the snake around to see what it looked like. I was shocked to see it move. It is alive! I put it back in the incubator.
What should I do? Do I need to put like saline solution in the egg to replace the lost egg white I sloshed out? Any ideas on what I should do?
I'm planning to leave the eggs in there overnight and check them tomorrow. Hopefully the one with the cut egg has developed enough and can survive outside of the egg.
I am quite inexperienced at hatching ball python eggs. This is my 4th clutch of ball python eggs. All clutches have had some snakes hatch out. However, in the previous 3 clutches I've always had what looked like some fully formed snakes never hatch out, so I was planning to slit eggs open this time. I don't know if I cut too early this time.
This clutch of eggs had 5 eggs originally and had a difficult start. This clutch was discovered for some time laying on dry substrate. 3 of the eggs were very dry and eventually hardened and got tossed out when they got hard and moldy.
Reply With Quote