I agree with Jon. I have done Maternal Incubation, set up a cage as an incubator and used home-made incubators. All of these have been successful. The only difference is, as Jon points out, that females will not eat for an extra two months. That is not a big deal if she's a hog and eats a great deal after hatching but it can mean the loss of a whole breeding season (year) if she is not an agressive feeder. In the wild the majority of Ball pythons only breed every other year for exactly this reason. As hobbyist/breeders we want to do better than this. I hatched 265 balls last year using converted refrigerators as incubators. I am confident that a survey of "big name" breeders would reveal that over 90% use artificial incubation techniques. I know that Sutherlands, Ralph Davis, Barkers, Nerd, Bells, Sharp ande most others do. Bob Clark's article that Tosha refers to is great and if I was breeding large snakes (retics, burms,rocks) then the added component of personal injury when taking eggs would encourage me to let mom do the work but with high dollar BPs I too am a Control Freak! If you decide to use the cage then definitely Can the Fan !



Just my 2 cents

Richard

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• Question about maternal incubation - Cyn, Mon Apr 10 00:27:37 2006
• BUY A INCUBATOR - coldbloodaddict, Mon Apr 10 00:52:10 2006
• RE: Question about maternal incubation - RandyRemington, Mon Apr 10 08:16:36 2006
• Randy, Informative as always and - RoyalVariations-, Mon Apr 10 09:29:09 2006
• RE: Question about maternal incubation - toshamc, Mon Apr 10 09:55:09 2006
• Link - toshamc, Mon Apr 10 09:57:39 2006
• RE: Question about maternal incubation - Richard_Fisher, Fri Apr 14 09:11:56 2006