Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My first clutch ever was layed on May 3d. There was a total of 5 large and healthy eggs. I have them in an incubator. The all seemed fine until after the first week. Two of them have seemed to have died, they have turned green on the inside and look very unhealthy. Is this normal to lose eggs that were healthy, am i doing something wrong. The other two three seem to be doing fine. The temps are around 90%, and the humidity is at about 80%, they are in a plastic Tupperware container with holes in the lid, in moist vermiculite bedding in a hova-bator incubator. I feel like such a bad parent. What am i doing wrong.

Did you candle them to make sure they were fertile?

Could be a number of things. As zefdin suggests they may have been infertile but that is unlikely as slugs are usually obvious. If they rolled or you did not keep them the same way up as you found them that could definitely do it. Hovabators do not do a great job for Ball python eggs - they have trouble maintaining temps above about 85 with much consistency. Over wet media (vermiculie/perlite) could cause it. Temperature conditions for the female in the days prior to egg laying is yet another area to consider. Lastly, did you breed the snakes or was it a wild caught, gravid female - if so you have no way of knowing what conditions she may have been exposed to. Sorry for your losses but keep trying.

When I first started, I used Hovabators exclusively with 100% success rate. Using the "wafer" temps would fluctuate an average of 1-2 degrees but never more than 3. Not an issue with Ball Python eggs. I have found them to be extremely reliable. Hooked up to a reliable controller such as the Helix, temps should stay within 1-2 degrees. From the OP's description, it sounds like rotting eggs - which were probably infertile to begin with.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Some thoughts...

If the were in fact fertile, and large fat white eggs usually are, then it IS most likely a husbandry issue on your end. Occasionally an good egg will die naturally on its own, but to have two die naturally would make me think something is going on.

Without seeing them, its kind of hard to diagnose, but If I had to guess as to a cause...well, read on (I'm assuming your temps have been stable throughout)-

In my experience, most egg death can be attributed to overly wet conditions (why I devloped my modified no substrate method). If they were overly dry, they would start to collapse or dimple prematurely. Since you didn't mention them collapsing, I would lean toward overly wet substrate. I think I recall you used vermiculite. It should just clump when you squeeze it. If you can actually squeeze water out if it, it is too wet. Its kind of hard to swithc up midstream, especially since you have one small incubator, but I would try to set up another, dryer egg box (or better yet, go no-sub). The new eggbox with dryer substrate should have less ventilation, to ensure high humidity.

If you think that the moisture in the substrate is at an appropriate level, then I don't know what else to suggest. Keep us posted...

If the other eggs hatch, then, you did nothing wrong and they would have died anyhow! As far as substrate goes, I've benn using damp vermiculite for 17 years and have had no problems! Ernie Wagner once told me to dampen the verm. til it's like "freshly dug earth"! That has stuck with me every time I make a "box", and it's worked! Not knowing all your details, I'm guessing those eggs were infertile to begin with and would have died anyhow! Don't sweat it! GOOD LUCK!

Thanks for all your help guys. Yes i believe they were all fertile to begin with. All 5 had veins but the two that did die had very little veins compared to the three healthy eggs. The vermiculite is not too wet it seems to be just like you guys explain but i think i may know what ay have caused it. My mom went into the room and misread the thermometer wrong and turned the incubator off onr morning. By the time i caught it it was about 84 degrees....do you think this big of a fluctuation would have done it? The other three seem to be in good health i have even candled them and saw movement inside. Also what should i do with the rotting eggs......they are stuck to the good ones.

A drop to 84 degrees most likely had no bearing on the eggs. I have had some big fat beautiful eggs with little or no veining die. It happpens. Sucks though.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

That slight drop for a short while wouldn't have killed the eggs, unless maybe there was a temperature "spike" on the way back up. If your thermometer is not working properly, sometimes the temps can get well over the set temperature before settling out right around the set temperature.

One thing I look at when candleing eggs is the "glow". Fertile eggs have a nice pink glow throughout. Infertile ones have more of a yellow glow. A couple of years ago I had an egg that appeared to have good veination on only one end of the egg (probably about 1/3 of the egg was vascularized), and the overall yellowish glow. It did fairly quickly go south.

MY hyptohesis at the time (and its only a guess), was that it was a twin egg, with two ova shelled together. One was fertile, the other not. The infertile one spoiled the good one as it began to decay.

Should i remove the bad eggs then.....use like fishing line or tooth floss to separate them from the good ones and throw them away?

Some people feel strongly that you should remove them...while others like to leave them be. A bad egg should not harm and adjacent good one, as good eggs seem to have a pretty robust immune system. IT certainly can't hurt to remove them, as long as you don't puncture the good eggs. The dental floss is mentioned as a way to seperate them...just carefully "saw" them apart. I've had very few dead eggs since going to no substrate a few years ago, but here is a pic from the past. As you can see, a large clutch developed just fine with one horribly rotten dead egg attached (upper right).

I used a Havobator successfully, however the wafer controller does have a wide hysteresis, at least when I was trying to calibrate my incubator.

I think with a wafer there is alot of room for room for error , from the way you have the set screw torqued to the inaccuracy of the way the metal in the wafer expands and contracts to turn the current on and off.

I eventually went with a Herpstat controller and nixed the wafer. This year I did away with the Havobator for a little bit larger and deeper setup. Thats another thing, the heat element in a Havobator is right on top of the eggs, I hated that aspect also.

I've got one in the incubator that is just like that. One side yellow and no veins, the other side pink and great veins. I do expect it to go bad.
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2.1 Albino BP
0.4 100% Het Albino
2.1 100% het Caramel Albino BP
1.0 100% Het Clown
1.0 50% het clown
2.12 Normal BP
0.0.2 Western Hognose
alot of cornsnakes
0.1.0 Dumeril Boa
3.6 Bearded Dragons
1.0.2 Sulcatta tortoise
3.3 Russian Tortoise
1.0 Cockatiel
0.1 Rottweiler
0.2 Boston Terriers
0.1 White Boxer
0.1 Paint Mare
bunch of geckos
0.1 Cat
0.1 Teenage daughter
1.0 Husband who puts up with all my critters.

.

This is my first year breeding, and I ended up losing 3 eggs from my first clutch of 6. I had them in a Hovabator hooked up to a Helix with an ACU-RITE thermometer as a secondary temperature monitor. I used HatchRite substrate and plastic boxes with ventilation holes. After watching the first 3 turn green and disgusting and the other 3 start looking questionable, I realized I needed to change how they were being incubated. They had all candled with good veins and weighed 100-102g each, so I boiled it down to something being wrong inside the Hovabator setup.

I built an incubator out of a mini-fridge I bought from someone for $30 (gutted it and put heat cable inside), set the Helix and ACU-RITE up to monitor two different areas of the fridge (Helix probe at the top where it gets the warmest), and replaced the lids on the egg boxes with new ones that had no ventilation holes. Since then, the remaining 3 eggs are doing well (didn't fully rebound but did somewhat, and are still white and holding steady), and the 2 clutches I got after that are doing fantastic, not a single issue with any of them.

I know others have done well with Hovabators, but I went against the advice I was given by people on different forums NOT to get one, and got one anyway -- and ended up losing 3 eggs. You may want to consider building a better incubator and going with no air holes in your egg boxes. I open mine every few days to let in fresh air and check on them, and it works well.

Good luck!
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~* Jen *~

blame the incubator, you might want to determine the true cause of the problem. Otherwise, you are likely to run into the same issue. I'm not saying it wasn't the incubator, but the Hovabator has been is use successfully by millions of people for many years. An incubator serves a basic purpose and for BP eggs, it's only one part of the equation. It is not a magical box. 100% of the time, I have found users at fault, not the incubator, whether it be a Hovabator, home-built or more expensive "reptile" incubator.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Jay...I know you use (or have used) hovabators with great success. I also know that a lot of folks have had LOTS of problems incubating BP eggs with them.

Keeping in mind that incubating BP eggs is fairly simple if you can find a way to meet the 2 basic requirements (temp and humidity), I think most beginners run into problems with one or more of the following aspects of the hovabator:

1) Crappy thermostat (an easy, if not cheap, fix)
2) size and shape of the incubator
3) location of the heating element
4) Which model to buy
5) several possible sources of human error with this incubator (how the eggs are set up, and more)

Have you done a little write up on how to modify and use the hovabator successfully? I think it would be a big help to lots of folks just starting out with this particular incubator if you made that info available. You know, you might even want to check with the manufactor to see if they have an interest in including your info in their packaging...

just some thoughts...

I'm in the middle of writing an article now. It's primary purpose is not to tout the Hovabator but as an introductory to getting started in breeding without "selling the farm". It just happens to use the Hovabator and has some things that need to be considered/modified. I hope to have it finished soon.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

I'm going to do a detailed article on my no-sub incubation method.

I actually have a little article on incubator construction coming out in the August issue of REPTILES magazine...

Based on the fact that I didn't change anything in how the eggs were set up other than new lids with no ventilation holes, and they have been doing amazingly well in the incubator I built vs. the Hovabator, I think I can safely assume that most (not all) of the problem was due to the Hovabator.
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~* Jen *~