Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i often look the hognose forum for the great pics and messages, the pics in the wild i like very much (my english is not great)
now i was thinking, do some of you see eggs in the wild?? and where do western hognoses lay there eggs?? does the temperature stay constant. i cant imagin that the night and day temp. of the eggs is the same.
is there some one who knows??
in captive breeding whe tent to keep the eggs the same temperature, last year i kept a smaal clutch of eggs at a temperature of 25 or 26 degrees celcius and the hognoses hatched where bigger and ate after they left the eggs.
any same expiriance???
regrads hans

Not sure if I will hit your questions.

You seem to raise excellent points with natural egg incubation temperatures etc. I'm going to try and show this...this year...in that I have a female with eggs being radio-tracked.

But, there is all kinds of evidence in lizards (and I think at least some snakes) that egg temp and even the temp of live bearing snakes, effect the vigor of young.

Even genetically determined sex, can be skewed by incubation temperature. This isn't temperature determination, but environmentally determined changes. Incubation can effect coloration traits, temperment, and as you said vigor.

I think it is a fascinating field of study to be further worked on in snakes especially. For instance, if it is cloudy all Spring in an area, and a female with 40 eggs doesn't get to bask as often, and the eggs are at lets say 70 in her uterus the entire time.....does that produce different young then if she was at 82 for most of the days? I would say yes. The data has to be collected, and it isn't easy to have multiple gravid female hogs under carefully controlled conditions. Why for instance does one population of hognoses only 12 miles from another in my area....have black, green, brown and black/orange animals in the population...yet the other group only produces greenish forms (never found anything else in that area). I would say this is only genetics, but I am suspicious of other factors. BTW, interestingly enough, temperature is one of the differences between these two areas....by elevation changes. Hum.

Best,
Kenny

Hansholland,
Do you mean you varied the temperature on the hognoses that came out vigorous? Or the temp was rather steady?

I'm not sure why some hognose babies eat RIGHT AWAY, yet other fight for weeks. This is a mystery I'd love to answer. I had one big clutch where the babies ate quickly. I had another clutch of 9 babies where I lost all 9 in about 4 weeks to starvation. I can't explain any differences.

In NY wild snakes up in the north, the egglaying sites I have a hunch almost certainly flucuate rather wildly.

Anyone have that recent paper (last year) about Ontario hogs that lay eggs in communal nest sites? Maybe that has data on incubation temps. I'm home sick with Lyme disease so I don't have that paper in hand.

Best,
Kenny

you have given it a lot of tought!!! i have a friend who breeds many corns he always incubates the eggs at 29 celcius and he has a lot of trouble by getting them to eat.(in the begin later they will eat)
i dont breed a lot of snakes but i incubate the eggs i get much lower about 26 celcius. the temperature isnt constant, sometimes the temp wil cool to 25, and other times it will heat to 28 celcius..
the ofspring i get are bigger and always eat after the first shed.
i dont keep reccord of the days i just see when they hatch, maybe next year i will.
regards hans

oh and i would like to say,
i hope you will get better soon!!!
hans