Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just wanted to contribute some data to the on going discussion on hatch rates.
All eggs were set up in moist vermiculate inside tupperware with holes poked in the lids and incubated at 80.6 degrees with circulating humidified air. The lids were removed regularly for inspection, more so in the begining and toward the end.

1st pair was this generic dark blairs female who has given us 3 clutches in the past, never producing any live young. Last year , some of her eggs had fully formed young found dead in the eggs.

Male is a wild caught palma draw blairs

The clutch started pipping at 64 days, At 66 days we had 4 live young out of the eggs and no further pipping but still a few good looking eggs. We started opening eggs. We found 3 fully formed young dead in the egg and the rest were empty. results 4-13

2nd clutch was from a pair of wild caught 277 blairs from the radio tower. The female was gravid when caught in 2004 and gave us 6 good eggs that all hatched. This is the first time she bred since then. All eggs looked great from the beginning to the end. Hatch rate was 7-7.

3rd clutch came from a 277 red bluff alterna phase female produced by Aaron Matteson and a wild caught 277 alterna phase male.

male

female

Three eggs pipped after 65 days. After 24 hours we put a window in the 4th egg and found a live baby. Clutch total was 4-4.

We are very happy with the results although like everyone else we would like to know why so many alterna are lost in the final stages of developement. {Tom}

Tom, I got 9/11 junos, 10/10 generics, 5/8 277's, although 2 of those 8 are kinked and actually alive still,I had another generic clutch with two live, and a few bad eggs, and another clutch of junos go 4/8 with four eggs having gone bad earlier in the term. I am pretty sure aside from vitamins / nutrition keeping good air flow and no more moisture than absolutely nessisary no or little contact with substrate is the key.

jim

Jim,

At what temperature did you incubate your eggs?
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

about 80, not much more.

Jim,
next year I will be trying egg crates under the eggs above the substarte. I have seen many breeders of python eggs and whatever use this affectivly. Its plastic thats little squares and you just cut it to fit in the egg box.Use vermeculite or perlite or whatever and it can be really wet and the eggs just sit atop the crate.

shannon

Hey Coach....great to see you posting again....we have had a lot of problems with our alterna hatching as well.....I have tried all sorts of strategies to get the hatch rate up. I am almost positive it is something that is occurring to the adults before or during egg/sperm formation.....more on that on another post.....

Oh, by the way....the pinstriper of yours.....ROCKS! I always have to congratulate you on that every time I see an image of the animal...Hi to Maureen....gmerker

I had 100% hatch rate

Generic female - 2 clutches 15/15 and 9/9

Generic (val verde) female - 7/7

Lajitas female - 2/2

All good and all hatched.

I incubated the same as I do corns, on a mix of vermiculite and perlite, I think I incubated 2 clutches on all perlite.

I did feed all the females diurnal lizards for the three meals before and after brumation. I think that was the key. Brumation, was was at an average of 65 degrees.
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South Texas Herps

Were the lizards native US lizards and were they frozen prior to feeding? If so how long were they frozen for? Did you give lizards to both the males and females?
I am very interested in trying this method on a trio of cb alterna that I have that used to have ok fertility but has declined to zero this year.

most of the lizards were some Sceloporus (Mostly Texas, a few blues), there were also a few Holbrookia (i believe they were all keeled) and a few Cnemidophorus. Almost all of the lizards were bought from a commercial collector, who would buy them from kids in south texas. they were frozen for 2 weeks or more before feeding. Some of the larger spiny lizards were cut in half before feeding. also, if the lizard was very large the legs were cut off and given separate to a different (smaller) female.

The males only got mice, they where never offered lizards. All of the females went right back to mice with no problem when offered mice. I did pick up two val verde county females in 06, neither of they took lizards when offered, both would only take mice. I thought that was interesting, considering both were WCs. Neither on of them bred this year either (the juno, was to small and I had no male, the 277 is a very large female , 38" at capture, and I doubt she will ever ovulate in captivity)
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South Texas Herps

Thanks very much for that info.

only two eggs in the clutch? or were there some jelly beans?
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http://www.hcu-tx.org

jelly beans?

She was a pretty small female, and the eggs were huge, she actually retained one, that was good, but I had to extirpate it through the side wall of the snake.
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South Texas Herps

>>jelly beans?
>>
>>She was a pretty small female, and the eggs were huge, she actually retained one, that was good, but I had to extirpate it through the side wall of the snake.
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>> South Texas Herps
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http://www.hcu-tx.org

np
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South Texas Herps

To add to some of the questions all animals in the breedings fed on mice except the palma draw male who at that time was only taking f/t lizards that I collected on various trips. Interestingly enough, that snake was involved in the 4-13 clutch, the worst results. (Tom)