Posted by:
HDEAN
at Thu Jul 7 09:03:54 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by HDEAN ]
FR, I hardly candle at all now. The only ones I candled this year where some new hybrids breedings that I wanted to see at least if they were fertilized or not. Most of the good looking eggs(nice bright white ones) candled good. This helped me decide whether to 2nd clutch the same pairing or not and to help decide whether to sell the parents off since the main expo I attend will be before the eggs hatch. So I now only candle a few clutches. Newbies ask all kinds of questions regarding eggs good or not and when they go bad they think the kept them too hot, too cold, too moist , too dry, they touched them, the egg next to it had mold, they accidentily moved it and it rolled over. It my experience and in an experiment I di it didn't matter. A good fertilized egg will hatch regardless of our interference as long as there are no underlying birth defects, genetic problems. You are right it isn't necessary to candle and an egg is good or bad regardless of what we do. But as you can see, even a breeder with 25 years experience still occassionaly candles some eggs. Good discussion though. I am adding the experiment I did below for you to comment on.
I decided to started an experiment using 4 good snake eggs(veins when candled). I wanted to know if turning snake eggs would hurt them. I know there is no reason to turn snake eggs and I don't recommend it but I was curious if all the talk about turning snakes eggs making them go bad was just as incorrect as most other don'ts such as (don't touch them with your bare hands, keep them at 100% humidity, don't let moldy eggs stay attached to good ones, keep at a constant temperature, etc). Most of these don'ts have proven to be false and are used as excuses when eggs go bad. Some just go bad and some were never fertilized even though they looked good. Things happen.
The experiment:
I started with 4 eggs from a Leucistic Texas Rat Snake that were layed on 6-28-99. I waited until I could candle all 4 eggs and see great veins in them. I decided to turn the eggs at different stages to see if it would hurt them. All were turned and none were to be at their original layed postion when hatching. Following is the turning schedule.
EGG ONE-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one half turn to the right and never bothered it again.
EGG TWO-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one quarter turn to the right and I turned it one quarter turn to the right every week until 8-21-99 with it being turned one and three quarters turns total.
EGG THREE--I turned this egg one half turn to the right on 8-4-99 about one half the way through incubation and never bothered it again.
EGG FOUR-- On 7-7-99 I turned this egg one half turn to the right and on 8-4-99 one half turn to the right again and on 8-21-99 one half turn to the right again for a total of one and one half total times.
All four eggs hatched on 9-4-99 with 4 perfect males.
Even though this grouping is too small for any real scientific findings it does show that in this case using Luecistic Texas Rat Snake eggs that turning them at these times did no harm.
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RE: Heres the point - HDEAN, Thu Jul 7 09:03:54 2005