First eggs of the season for me. :)

[Quiet Tempest]

Ok here is a silly question. With mom incubating the eggs do you notice that the hatchlings eat better or have less reaction to stress? They are being moved (even just a little as she coils and uncoils around them). What is your percentage of male vs female? It would be interesting to do a study of one year material incubation the next artificial incubation. I don't know how you would test the stress levels of the babies but it would be a cool experiment Thanks for keeping us updated. I look forward to more photos.

What kind of flashlight do you use to candle?

Maternal incubation is the only method I've ever used with balls so I don't really have anything to compare it to. Last year I had three females on eggs. There was a 4-egg clutch, a 5-egg clutch, and then another 4-egg clutch from those girls. The first 4-egg clutch gave me 3 males and 1 female, the 5-egg clutch gave me 4 females and 1 male and the last 4-egg clutch gave me 2 males and 2 females. The first two clutches started eating shortly after their first shed but the last clutch took nearly 2 weeks of persuasion before the babies started eating on their own.

For the most part, the eggs don't move much when the mom leaves the nest or adjusts her coils because they adhere together shortly after being laid. That's not always the case, though. Last year one of my clutches was "snowflaked" and didn't stick together so each time the mom moved, they'd be pushed around and one rolled out of the nest twice. They all hatched without any trouble but that rollaway egg had me anxious. I was candling it several times a day just to be sure it was still flitting around in there normally.

The flashlight I was using is some little cheap 9-bulb LED light that came from an auto parts store, I think. The logo on it reads: PT Performance Tool.

This looks like it - http://www.amazon.com/Wilmar-9-LED-P.../dp/B000N35JFA