Posted by:
Lichanura
at Thu Jun 25 08:33:09 2009 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Lichanura ]
Do female Womas produce heat for egg incubation? After searching for the answer and not really getting anywhere, I have quite definite proof that Womas do not produce heat for their egg incubation. I hope that you do not mind having to read this but I found this experience quite interesting.
I returned on Father's Day from a four day trip and found that both of my female Womas laid six eggs each. One had them scattered into two piles and they were quite stuck together, so I knew that there was no way the she could get them together to incubate them. The second clutch was being incubated by the female so I decided to leave her alone. My inquisitive mind wanted to compare maternal to artificial incubation. Steve of Boamorph.com has a fantastic article on incubation of Woma eggs and I quickly got my incubator set up according to his article and there the first batch sits now at 31.5 degrees C. I have two tubs of water in the incubator and I am thinking of spraying the entire inside to help with the humidity.
The real interesting part is the maternal incubation. This is my first experience with Woma eggs as I am used to hatching Green Tree Pythons eggs. I fully expected the female to produce the heat necessary to incubate her eggs. Using two Herpstat ND thermostats, I placed one probe in the incubation box, right in-between the eggs and the other outside the nesting box. I set the cage temp at 87 degrees F. I noted that the incubation temperature was lower or equal to the cage temperature but never higher. I thought that as odd. The next day I became alarmed when the female left her eggs. I quickly readied another box for the incubator and when I returned to the cage she had gone back to the eggs. Much to my relief. The next day, I was present when she left the nesting box again and I saw that she headed directly to the overhead heating panel and tried to wedge herself between the panel and the top of the cage. Soon she went back to the eggs. She did that again the same day when I decided that she was not thermo regulating with her own heat production. I had purchased two warming plates from the thrift store (at $3.00 each). One was 100 watts and the other 110 watts. I connected the 100 watt one to a rheostat and placed it in the cage. I used my hand to sense the temperature and I set it to what I will call a high warm. As if she understood exactly what was going on, she left the incubation box just as I finished and she headed directly for the warming plate and she stayed on top of it and went to no other part of the cage for about 20 minutes. She went directly back to her eggs. The temperature of the eggs went from about 87 to 92.1 degrees F. There is no doubt in my mind that she left her eggs to seek heat for them
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RE: Does the female Woma create heat? - Lichanura, Thu Jun 25 08:33:09 2009
