What causes stubby tails?

[rufretic]

Well I have some new info. Tonight after reading the ideas here that my eggs may actually be warmer than what I have my ambient set to, I decided it's not hard to find out because I still have one remaining clutch in the incubator. I have a temperature gun so I just zapped them and yep, they are definitely warmer for whatever reason. I have my thermostat set to 88 now and the eggs still read at 90.4. Which means when I had it set to 89 they could of possibly been cooking at up to 91-92 It's sad to think just a couple degrees could have such a major affect on all my babies I'm pretty sure this is my answer though, I was incubating too warm. I just wish I would of thought to check them right away, I just thought I was good because I did have an extra egg box setup with a thermometer in it and it was reading 89 as well. I have no idea why the eggs would be warmer than the ambient but I know now I need to set my herpstat at 87.0 to get the eggs around 89.

[rufretic]

One other thing to note, I believe the damage was done very early in the incubation process. My first clutch was maternally incubated for up to the first 6 days because I was out of town when she laid. That clutch was affected but mostly just with short tails, only 2 of 10 were nubs. The second clutch was put in the incubator within a day of being laid and all 7 are nubs with practically no tails. This means my third clutch is most likely going to turn out the same because they were also put in within a day. I'll follow up with how they turn out, unfortunately I'm not very hopeful

[Bogertophis]

... It's sad to think just a couple degrees could have such a major affect on all my babies I'm pretty sure this is my answer though,
I was incubating too warm....

I agree that's a possibility, though what seems odd to me is that for all the people breeding BPs, surely this minor temperature issue has occurred before?
Only a few degrees...why only yours? Granted, I am NOT a breeder of BPs, but many here are & no one seems to have seen this before...isn't that a bit odd?

[rufretic]

I agree that's a possibility, though what seems odd to me is that for all the people breeding BPs, surely this minor temperature issue has occurred before?
Only a few degrees...why only yours? Granted, I am NOT a breeder of BPs, but many here are & no one seems to have seen this before...isn't that a bit odd?

It's funny you bring this up because I thought the exact same thing when I searched and searched and couldn't even find a pic resembling my stubby tail babies. I just don't know what else it could be. I thought about toxins but I'm using the same stuff everyone uses, sterlite tubs, plastic light diffuser and vermiculite, I even made sure to get vermiculite that had no extra ingredients. I'll tell you what, if the lower temps doesn't stop it from happening on my next clutch I'm going to scrap the whole incubator and start from scratch. Last year I used a cooler and had a perfect 7 of 7 babies. This year is my first year with this incubator because I needed more room. It was used by the previous owner though and he had plenty of healthy babies hatch out of it so I'm just at a loss. It's very frustrating, My first clutch was full of desert ghost babies and one of the males that got the stub tail would of been a couple thousand dollar snake and the next clutch is clown combos so I'm not just sad about the lives, it also is a huge loss in invested time and money. I've never been so disappointed in my life. Not to mention I'm probably going to have to euthanize a bunch of little babies that I love

[JodanOrNoDan]

Well I have some new info. Tonight after reading the ideas here that my eggs may actually be warmer than what I have my ambient set to, I decided it's not hard to find out because I still have one remaining clutch in the incubator. I have a temperature gun so I just zapped them and yep, they are definitely warmer for whatever reason. I have my thermostat set to 88 now and the eggs still read at 90.4. Which means when I had it set to 89 they could of possibly been cooking at up to 91-92 It's sad to think just a couple degrees could have such a major affect on all my babies I'm pretty sure this is my answer though, I was incubating too warm. I just wish I would of thought to check them right away, I just thought I was good because I did have an extra egg box setup with a thermometer in it and it was reading 89 as well. I have no idea why the eggs would be warmer than the ambient but I know now I need to set my herpstat at 87.0 to get the eggs around 89.

I discovered this by accident. In the beginning I was super anal about monitoring temps and running three different probes. My readings were so flaky i thought my gauges were off but they were all within a 10th of a degree of each other. I also noticed the heating in my incubator rarely cut on, so something had to be making heat. This lead to me placing the thermostat probe between a couple eggs. It is almost always 2 degrees above the incubator's ambient. All of this led to me setting the thermostat to 87. The readings you are getting are consistent with what I found.

Also, another little tidbit of data. Once the shells begin to soften the egg temp rises. Due to this, my primary probe is always placed in the oldest clutch.