We're at our wits end with this. We've had four clutches this year in our new incubator (a PVC sided one with sliding doors. Same kind used and recommended by Mutation Creation. Pics included below!) and of the four, two have had babies hatch with overbites, aka: shark mouth. We are hoping anyone might have some suggestions or ideas we haven't thought about regarding why this is happening. Info below is of all the clutches we've hatched since getting the new incubator, and beneath all those, our set up.

First clutch: 5 eggs. Mojave x Lesser Mojave
- 4 healthy babies!
- 1 egg went bad about 3/4 through incubation (as this happens occasionally, it wasn't alarming. We did not open the egg.)

Second clutch: 9 eggs. Champagne x Black Pastel. We have bred the Black Pastel male before and gotten healthy babies. The Champagne was bought as a proven breeder, though her first clutch with us.
- 1 perfectly normal baby
- 2 babies with mild overbites
- 4 babies with overbites (culled)
- 2 babies passed in eggs. Kinking and overbites in both.
We did not hear back from the breeder who sold her to us, and sadly, we never will as he has since passed away. This second clutch was incubated at the same settings as the first clutch.

Third clutch: 3 eggs. het Clown x Pastel het Clown
- 3 healthy babies! These were in the incubator at the same time as clutch 3 (one month overlap) and we changed nothing between clutches.

Fourth clutch: 8 eggs. Fire Woma het Hypo x Coral Glow het Pied. Both proven breeders with no issues.
- 6 perfectly normal babies
- 1 baby with mild overbite (their egg was in the middle of the bin, not near front or back)
- 1 baby passed in egg, no visible deformities. We aren't sure why they didn't hatch.

For all four clutches:
- We know we had no power outages or massive temp fluctuations. I work from home and we're home bodies, so we are confident in this.
- We double checked our thermostat readings were accurate by measuring with a stand alone probe.
- The probe itself is in the very centre of the incubator.
- Egg bins were covered with press n seal, and once a week, aired out and rotated. We did the air out/rotation quickly (simply lifting a corner of the press n seal, resealing, and putting it back in rotated).
- When eggs started to collapse near end of incubation, we lifted a corner of the press n seal to allow some humidity to escape as humidity levels rise exponentially around then.
- Pearlite is used. Approx 1.5 inches deep with enough water to be damp but still crumble in hand (not dripping). We poke our fingers into the substrate every three weeks to ensure still damp.
- Incubator has fan running
- Eggs are incubated at 90F (thermostat is at 88, but inside of tubs reads at 90F when we leave a probe in the tub)
- Humidity in the sealed egg bins probes between 90% and 100%
- We also put our stand alone probe in various parts of the incubator to make sure there were no alarmingly huge temp fluctuations between front/back/sides. There were differences of one degree when right next to the heat tape, but nothing to note near where the eggs would ever be


The first time this happened, we scoured this site and read every thread we could find at least once (we referred to the especially long one multiple times!). We rechecked our temps and humidity levels and found no red flags, and the third clutch (which had already been incubating for a month at the time that the scary second clutch hatched) hatched perfectly normal a month later.

After much reading, testing and fretting, the third clutch hatching perfectly normal made us breathe a sigh of relief; we assumed the parents of the second clutch were incompatible genetically or it was the mother. (Similar to another post on here, she also had been off food for a long time before ovulating, and we were surprised she went). But now with the fourth clutch having one mildly deformed baby and one baby pass in the egg, we're back to questioning if there is something we're missing or doing wrong with the new incubator. We love our snakes so much, so worrying it's something we're doing wrong is killing us.

Previous to this, we used homemade incubators (using broken mini fridges) at the same temps/humidity as we have in the new incubator and had zero issues. We were wondering anyway if there is something we aren't thinking of... Is this simply really bad luck or could there possible be something with the new incubator we aren't aware of? Any suggestions and advice are much appreciated.


NOTE: The substrate and egg seen here in the bin are from clutch 4. We are not leaving the incubator door open here with a clutch of eggs incubating in it.


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And for anyone who is reading this in future and curious about how well these babies do... The two babies with mild overbites from the 2nd clutch who weren't culled are about 2 and a half months old at the time of this writing. They were not culled because we saw tongue flicks (though much smaller than a normal bp's tongue) and their overbites were very minimal, so we wanted to give them a chance. They are now great eaters on F/T, growing well, and we've observed all normal behaviour from them. Interestingly, one of them had a straight tongue (no fork) for over a month, then one day, our tongue was suddenly a bit longer and forked! We're holding onto them for awhile to keep an eye on them, but we are giving them to friends who are experienced reptile keepers, and most importantly, who are trustworthy, ethical people who would never think to breed them.

And again for anyone reading this who finds themselves in a similar situation: Babies whose deformities were more severe were culled by destroying the brain completely and instantly, as recommended in other posts on this site. It was beyond awful to do... We're in this hobby because we love snakes... but it was what was fastest for the babies, and after reading the posts on here, it was the right way to go about it. :-(

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I should really try to post on this forum more often. I appreciate all the amazing advice we always get from people here! I feel like I only post when we have problems though!! -_-