Quote Originally Posted by Wh00h0069 View Post
Just saw your gallery pics. Grats on your hatchlings this season. Sorry to hear that you lost a few due to incubator issues. I lost three last season due to a power outage... They all seem to be doing good this year. Three more clutches due to hatch within the next two weeks.
What happened was the incubator decided to malfunction the moment i started using it for this clutch (never buy used!!) so i resorted to maternal incubation (never again!). Had to tuen the entire tank into a big incubator. Had no problem keeping the temp exact the entire time. The problem was she refused to let the eggs touch the bedding. She hollowed out a hole down to the glass & didn't come off the eggs not even once.

So even with many inches of a good moisture holding bedding & a hygrometer reading at least 90% the entire time, she was actually keeping the eggs too dry by staying so tightly coiled around them.

I had 5 good, huge, bright white eggs. But 3 started to collapse just a month into it. After the first pip i removed them to a seperate, smaller tank set up at the right temp & humidity. 2 of the babies died in the egg prematurally. They appeared almost fully developed. The 3rd one came out too soon & never absorbed the yolk. He was a runt and died shortly after. So i only had the 2 i have pictured left.

I learned a valuable lesson from it. Sometimes a snake can be TOO good of a mother for maternal incubation. She also developed egg sores for refusing to move off the eggs. Im guessing it will be a few more sheds before the scars from that come off completely. Im lucky i got what i got. But this year will be very different. No more maternal incubation!