Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey i have breed my ball pythons one time but had two clutches (the female i thought was a male laid eggs a few months after i bought her) But both clutches went bad. I used moist Perfect Hatch "Glitter Grade" Vermiculite from big apple and both times the clutches went bad. I dont know if it is something i am doing or if the female is infertal but i have a pair of het albinos and possibly het pieds coming and want to get it figured out before then. Any suggestions of commen mistakes or anything? Here is a pic of one of the bad clutches

Your medium could be way to moist when in direct contact with eggs, what I do is add alot of water then clump it in a tight fist to drain all excess water out then I add it to my container. I hope this helps.

You have posted a pic of this clutch after it has gone bad. Do you have any pics of the clutch when it was first deposited? You said you used Vermiculite. Can you describe how you prepared the Vermiculite? Can you describe your incubator set up and temperatures? Did you cut open the eggs before you discarded them? Do you think they were all fertile?

It's hard to tell, but that vermiculite looks downright wet. If so, that's not a good thing.

-Joan

In my opinion from the pics it is clear that your medium is too wet and your container is smaller than is optimal. I would also suspect based on the moisture condensated on the eggs that your incubator might not be maintaining a constant temperature. It is far worse to have too much moisture than not quite enough.
My suggestions:
1. Make sure your incubator is maintaining even temps throughout and they are maintained within 1 degree (I use a proportional thermostat with good airflow in the incubator and maintain temps essentially constant except for when I open the doors).
2. Cut down the moisture content of your medium. I use a 50% -50% mix of Vermiculite & Pearlite. The Pearlite doesn't get as wet or "soggy" as vermiculite and the mix helps keep good structure and some "air flow" in the medium.
3. Use a bigger egg container and more meduim. If you use at least 4 inches of medium (50%-50% mix of Vermiculite to Pearlite) in a large enough egg container it is much easier to maintain proper humidity and much harder to get too much. While I don't recommend it, I have actually incubated eggs on top of 5 inches of medium where there is actually about a half inch of water in the bottom of the egg box with no problems.
4. One final thing. You don't have to put the eggs too deep in the medium. Remember that respiration occurs through the shell and can't occur through a wet shell. I put the eggs approximately 1/2 inch into loose medium.
Hope this helps.
Good Luck.
Grant

I am in the process of building a new incubator out of a 102 qt marine cooler. Rubbermaid just came out with new cleartop containers that I was going to use until I read your post. The container is 12.35" x 8.65" x 3.6", I was going to use about 1" of verm/perl mix a little wetter that normal but use this very thin watertite foamlike sheet to put over the majority of the medium and lay the eggs directly on it and because the box seals I shouldnt loose much moisture at all. since the top is way thinner than the 1/4 plexiglass I was using, should I have a condensation problem, if the air temperature in the actual incubator is close enough to the internal temps in the container. I was going to start experimenting today.

The eggs looked as thought they may have been fetile, slugs or infertiles are normally much smaller and a different color, most of the times. I can see one that looks like it may have been a slug. But the substrate is definatley too wet, like someone mentioned perlite, i second that, i use 2 cups perlite and 4 cups vermiculite and make it slighlty damp,you can always add more water if the eggs start to cave. In my opinion i say the substarte was way too damp..
Good luck this season .

Hi,

It wasn't very long ago that I was just beginning to learn about incubation myself so take this for what it's worth. You did receive some good advice here. I think more medium would be a good thing for your clutches. Also, a good starting point for incubation, if you are using a medium like vermiculite or perlite, is a 50/50 water to medium ratio (BY WEIGHT). You can also put some eggcrate (the plastic grates that cover flourescent type lights) on top of the medium and then set the eggs on top of that rather than bury them in the medium. That is a common technique.

And as someone mentioned, condensation, at least for the majority of the incubation period, is caused by temperature differential. I use an incubator right now that is subject to condensation within the egg chamber. I know how to make it work now and I can hatch eggs fine with it but I have to monitor it and deal with the temp. inconsistency. Of course it is much better to have your incubator dialed and with even temps all around.

I believe ball python eggs are quite resilient actually given a fertile clutch and reasonable incubation conditions.

Good luck!

Ian

I thought that moisture was my problem. I used a hoverbator incubator and I hooked up my big apple herps thermostat to controll the temps. The tepms where pretty consistent other than when i opened up the incubator to let the eggs get air. I do not have any other pictures. The eggs all looked good (as far as i know from seeing good clutches on the internet) with the exception of the one little slug on top that i could not seperate from the rest. I may have been able to with a little force but i was worried about hurting ther other eggs. Is it a problem to not take the sluggs out (other than the terrible smell)? Thanks to everyone who posted and to whoever else does.