This is a long story, sorry. These are my first ball eggs to incubate. Thank you to all who feel that can take the time to read this.
I purchased an adult female ball from my local pet shop that was from a group of 5 adult balls and one adult boa (whick I also purchased) that the person who owned had to give up due to moving to a place that would not accept them. I thought the female looked gravid and I was right. She was actually ovulating at the time. She shed about 2 1/2 weeks later and laid her eggs two days ago (May 31).
She is housed in a 20L tank in my heated snake room that is maintained at 82-84 daytime & 78-80 night. She also has a small UTH under one side of the tank. She did all the things I had read like staying wrapped around her water dish for days and basically staid on the cool side of the tank till the last week. Then she went to the UTH side, moved all the bedding off the area and laid in the most contorted positions I have ever seen a snake lay in. She looked like she was squeezing herself like you do a tube of toothpaste...lol. Finally she laid 6 nice white eggs. I knew she had eggs in her but did not know if they were fertile or slugs since I had no idea if she had ever been with a male. I candled the top most three eggs after she was done and they all were full of red veins. I was THRILLED to say the least!!!! I opted to let her incubate her eggs since I only have one incubator and it had four clutches of corn eggs in it that incubate at lower temps then the ball eggs do.
I have two digital thermometer/hygrometer devices in her tank and realized I needed to up her humidity yesterdeay as it was very low. So I added some moist green moss around her to keep the humidity up. It worked great. The temps were at 85 - 86 degrees and the humidity 86 percent. I checked the temps and humidity a few times that day and all was fine but I noticed she was not staying coiled around her eggs, just her tail end was there. I figured, ok, since the humidity and temps were up there she probably felt no need to "snuggle" the eggs. But when I checked on her this morning she was still not wrapped around her eggs, just laying with them and the temps were down to 82 & humidity 60 percent and three of the eggs were dented in from lack of moisture.
I realized that mom incubation was not going to work so I took the containers of corn eggs out of the incubator and put them into the snake room to finish off with shelf incubation since the room is maintained at proper temps for them. I upped the incubator temps to 89 degrees, took a large container, put perlite & vermiculite in it, dampened it with water, drained the mixture so it had no standing water in it, put that into the incubator to get to the same temps as the incubator then put the eggs into it. I put barely damp green moss over them then put the cover on the container and that is where they are now.
Here are pictures of how I set them up, you can see the dented in eggs in the first pic. I did candle the eggs again once I got them settled in the medium and they still had red veins in them.
Thanks to all who read this, much appreciated. You'd think I would be fine with things now as I have hatched corn eggs for 4 years now without problems but this is the first for ball eggs for me and I want so much for these to hatch, even though I am sure they must be just normals.
My questions are:
1) What should/could I have done so the mother would not have abondoned care of the eggs. Other than putting the moss in prior to her laying that is. Are they always that touchy about being "pestered" at this time? I only bothered her to put the moss in and candle the eggs on top to be sure they were fertile, then I covered her cage with a towel for less disturbance and only lifted the edge of the towel to peek in at the temp/humidity guages to make sure it was all fine. Otherwise she was never handled or touched.
2) Is all I did enough for the eggs to keep them from dieing? Is there anything else I could/should do? They still had veins in them but I am concerned they may still die off from all the fussing. And, they were not rotated or anything from their original positioning and all are glued together still.
Here are the pics of how I set the eggs up for incubation:
Here's mom after I got her, when she was gravid:
