Here are my two favorite breeding resources. Works well for me and a lot of my friends.

http://www.ballpython.ca/gallery/breeding.html

http://www.jkobylkareptiles.com/page.php?id=011

The grate you've seen to keep the eggs away from the substrate is called egg crate. You can buy it at places like home depot and the like. It's usually sold in big sheets so it's not very practical to order it over the internet.

For the ratio of substrate:water, I usually use plain vermiculite (make sure you get the kind without asbestos or other contaminants, it'll usually say on the bag) and mix it to the point where it'll clump together like a snowball but crumble apart very easily. If you can squeeze any drips out of it, it's too wet. Don't fret about it TOO much. It's not an exact science, after all, these guys have been hatching successfully for thousands of years in the wild, in holes in the ground! People generally use eggcrate as a safety measure, just in case they did mix the substrate too wet. If the eggs aren't touching too-wet substrate, it can't do them any harm.

For the incubator, I put together a fairly inexpensive one using an old rockstar energy drink display fridge with a glass front. I bought it off of craigslist. I didn't strip the fridge out at all, all I did was put a bunch of heat rope in there, kind of clumsily draped over the shelf and down the back and sides of the fridge, hooked it up to a spyder robotics herpstat, and insulated the whole thing with a metallic emergency blanket. It worked wonderfully and has since successfully incubated several clutches.

The only downside to that incubator was the fact that to get into it you had to open the door, which constituted one whole side of the thing, and heat spilled out of it really rapidly. If you go this route, please please resist the temptation to open it frequently and check on the eggs. Never open it during the cold of the morning or night, and make sure never to leave the door open. I lost my first clutch doing this. I opened it in the morning and didn't close it while I was candling the eggs, which caused the temp to go way down and when it warmed back up, it overshot the target temp and heat spiked.


If you need more help feel free to PM me!

Good luck!

http://youtu.be/frviiLuSsfU - it's really an awesome experience.