I came home this afternoon and checked on my clutch of normal x pastel eggs, which were due to hatch this week. I noticed an egg had multiple slits in it. generally, I cut after the first pip just to see whats going on. I decided to wait until I saw a head before I cut. I checked on it a few hours later, and nothing had changed-but something didn't look quite right with that egg, or a few other ones. I ended up opening all 7 eggs, and found 5 pastels and 1 normal that had gone full term and died in the egg. They looked as if they somehow got too dry during the last few days. I've never had this happen before, and I don't think I did anything drastically different than any of the other clutches I've hatched. I'm wondering if the vermiculite may have gotten a little too dry over the last couple days? I'm, to say the least, rather unhappy at the moment. Has anyone had this happen before? I want to avoid it happening again.



The eggs were in a plastic shoebox with a lid, on vermiculite mixed 1:1 with water by weight. My incubator is a cabinet style Natures spirit model with a helix thermostat, set at 89 degrees. This is the same set up I used to hatch ball pythons last year.

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