Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a pair of 07 Pastel and Spider, and planning to breed them in a few years... I have a 02 normal female thats gonna breed this year to a normal male.. ( Just practice) I have a hovabator that I used for ducks. Will that work? Here are some questions.
-Will 91 degrees make them hatch faster?
-How can I control humidity?
Just any good tips for Hovabator please!

Thanks

Jay Martin has a nice introductory article on using a hovabator on his site. Find one of his posts below and follow his link.

In my opinion, however, with the number of snakes you intend to breed, I would make you own, larger incubator. There is an article in the August '07 Reptiles that has some of the basicson incubator construction and no-substrate incubation, and it was written by a really swell forum member...

As far as your temps go, do NOT incubate at 91 degrees. I cook mine around 89 and have babies pip between 51 and 56 days most of the time. Higher temps won't do any better than that, and may be overly stressful. Not that some folks haven't done it, but I wouldn't. I hear the "farms" that hatch collected eggs in Africa incubate at 95 plus, and have all sorts of kinks and other deformities...

And finally, I STRONGLY reccomend using a modified no substrate incubation method, and humidity will become a non issue.

Good luck...

I strongly recommend using vermiculite and at least 3 inches of it......you need to use a different bottom than comes with the Hovabator.....you need to get a styrofoam box that fits and is alot taller than the Hovabator bottom....the heat source needs to be higher up and the vermiculite needs to be deep enough to hold the moisture.......and go for the 89 degrees........

I hatched balls (burms) for close to 15 years ,,and this year I tried the modified no substrate method.......out of need ....I ran out of vermic.......the eggs seemed fine for awhile and then went to crap........and if you change their environment they die.....(Barker book and experiences)......

long story short.......hundreds of ball eggs hatched here.usually 95 to 98 % hatch IF they were good to start with.....this year I killed at least 45 eggs and alot of $$$$$ trying no substrate with a Hovabator.......(maybe people have done it , so what ,why try it)

.....no substrate methods work better if the eggs are all in an enclosed box inside an incubator........Hovabators don't give you all that much room........

IF YOU CAN GET BOXES INSIDE A HOVABATOR -IT WILL PROBABLY WORK......I ACTUALLY DON'T USE SInGLE BOXES AND THIS IS WRITTEN FOR those of US USING THE WHOLE HOVABATOR AS ONE BOX FULL OF EGGS....
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.....too many BIG girls.........

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Im only going to have 1 cluth this year and 2 next year. So not to many eggs.

Last season was my first year breeding and i also used a hovabator. I used hatchrite as the medium and out of 4 egg I had a 100% hatch rate.(All 4 were female too !!!) The hacthrite kept the humidity at around 90% as long as I mixed the medium around the eggs. I used a on/off thermostat with the hovabator and everything went fine. Hope this helps and good luck!!!
Stevebp