Incubator

[Dragon]

Which, in your opinion, is the best incubator for the money? I know NOTHING about them and I'm 6 months away maybe even further out than that from needing one. But never too early to start doing the homework.

[Andrew21]

How hot is your room where you keep the snakes in the summer? I haven't bred yet, but i am going to this next season. All i'm going to do is put the eggs in a small tub, then put that in a styrofoam cooler. then put that on the top shelf in my closet which stays at a constant 82 degrees. They should hatch fine at temps from 76 to about 85 so basicly room temp will work. I wouldn't push it past those temps. I'm sure you could, but i wouldn't.

[Dragon]

Hello again Adam! My condo is, on the high side I would say 80 when I'm not home, when I get home it's (the smart thermostat) set to drop down to 76 but sometimes I run it down to 74 maybe even 72 if I'm bouncing around the place.

[Andrew21]

Adam? I'm assuming typo? haha, anyways, their incubation isn't that long. a little longer than 2 months. So maybe you'd want to just leave the thermostat up durring that time. or you could make your own real easy. I can't find the thread to save my life, so i'll try and describe it.

You take a styrofoam cooler and put heat tape down the side on the bottom then up the other side. Tape it down with alluminum tape. then put water bottles on top of that, then put your tub-o-eggs. You hook the heat tape up to a thermostat and set it at whatever degree you want. It should stay stable, and a little fluctuation isn't that bad for corns. You don't neccesarily need another "expensive" thermostat, but you do need another one. Be it a hydrofarm or a ve-200.

Credit for the incubator goes to whoever made that thread, not me.

[Dragon]

Adam? I'm assuming typo? haha, anyways...

So sorry, yes indeed a typo

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Good thread Andrew...appreciate the ideas/input.

[Dracoluna]

Honestly, I've been breeding corns for about 10 years and never used an incubator. Either they go up on a higher shelf, over my display tanks (which have heat lamps), or this year, I cheated and put the box on my hatchling rack. The heat strip at the back of the box keeps it between 78 and 80 degrees constantly. Works great and means I don't have to mess with an incubator. If you really want to do something separate, get some heat tape, a cheap thermostat (hydrofarms will work for corn eggs), and an incubated box. Old fridges, large coolers, etc. work great. In the process of getting an old dorm fridge set up for ball python eggs as we speak.

I'm pretty sure corns could survive the apocalypse so don't stress too much. Whatever you do, use an accurite type thermometer so you can see the max and min temps. Sometimes something as simple as running a ceiling fan can lower temps a degree or two.

[Blue Apple Herps]

Corn eggs are crazy easy to incubate. Biggest thin is to avoid high temps. They can tolerate cooler temps no problem. Cooler temps just mean longer incubation times. So long as they don't get much over 82 degrees is just do RT incubation.

If you really want to set one up there are plenty of high quality commercial ones. But best bang for buck is homemade one from a cooler.