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I just thought I would drop a note on my recent experiences with incubating Texas indigo eggs. Over the last three years, I have experienced mostly failures in incubating eggs from my single pair of T. indigos. The first year I bred them I did mangage to get 5 hatchlings. The next two years were total failures, one that I allude to here earlier was the lay box was too wet and she laid them behind her hide box and they were all to descicated to make it. This year I decide to try the lower temperature incubation that had been mentioned here. Twelve eggs were laid on May 5th. They were placed half buried in vermiculite in my living room. It is cooled by a room air conditioner that was set on 75F. There were a few hours here and there that the temperature was as cool as 73F and as high as 80F, but all in all they were kept within a 74-76 F temperature range. Two of the eggs went bad (one unfertile and one fertile but stopped developing early). On Monday August 27 one egg appeared to have pipped but was a very tiny hole. The next day a second egg pipped (again only a small slit). There was no additional action for a full two days and by that time I had slightly enlarge the opening on the initial two eggs. On days 4,5 and 6 an additional 6 eggs pipped. I had seen a head or two during this time frame but still no whole snake. Finally on days 7 and 8 snakes began to emerge. That left 2 eggs un-pipped after over a week since the first. I went ahead and made a small incision in both eggs. The fluid pressure inside the eggs was tremendous and at least 20-30 milliliter of fluid poored out. It took and additional two days but these snakes finally emerged. So I am happy to say I am the proud poppa of 10 texas indigos!! One snake has maybe the last 1/4 inch of its tail kinked and at some point I will remove the tiny kinked tip.

I just wanted to relay my experience with this. In the past I would have probably been opening the eggs at only 1-2 days after the first pip, but I am glad I held off this time. I will try and get some pictures up soon.

Oh, I should have mentioned that the first two eggs to pip were the 7th and 8th snakes to emerge at 8 days following pipping. If these lower temps COULD be the preferred incubation temperatures, I am just wondering how deep a hole you have to go in south Texas to find 75F? Maybe they just start a lot earlier than my captive animals.

It would not take that deep of a hole to get down to 75F in fact if an Indigo egg was laid far enough underground it could get as low as 55F. I do a lot of experimentation with snake eggs and find that the key to what you are doing has less to do with temperature as it dose with the fluctuation in temperature. I have had racer eggs hatch without kinks and the temperature was fluctuated between 65F and 105F!

The other factor we neglect is the nutrients that a snake needs to produce eggs with the right amount of nutrients to produce a healthy embryo and good calcium and the health effects on a female that has to pull that energy from her body tissue.

When you think of diet you seldom think of a snake that drinks milk or eats grass but a pink mouse, rat or rabbit is full of milk! A mature rat or mouse could have a gut full of partially digested grass and other wild forage. We have to ask ourselves what is missing in our domestic diet and how does it play into the reproduction process?

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

And thanks for the detailed report! Every bit of information helps.