I let my best (and now only) 10 year old female Kayuadi self incubate this year for my own curiosity. (I do have four girls that i held back from her last years clutch but they are two years away from breeding) I pulled out the nestbox about a week ago (a week shy of 79 days expected incubation) as she was so into eating, and was rarely going back on her eggs much the last few weeks. I set them up in my incubator waiting for the magic.
She shed about two weeks after laying her eggs and has been racing out of her nest box anytime i open the cage or turn the lights on, looking for food. I started feeding her about 4 weeks after laying. She comes totally off the eggs when food is placed in the cage, eats, gets a drink, and spends a day or two off the eggs and basks/hangs out and then back on the eggs. Temp gun aimed at the egg pile had the general surface egg temps running in the mid 80s 83-87 the entire incubation. I did not notice shivering nor significant maternal aggression with me poking her with my hook to get a look and temp shot at the egg mass. I initially only had mild supplemental heat below the nest box. With the egg temps running so low, I ran an 11 inch flexwatt strip on top of the vision cage to add supplemental heat radiating from above about three weeks into incubation. About two weeks into this, i started to notice that the top four eggs seemed to dry out and pankake a bit, so i covered the nest box with newspaper and would spray the underside ceiling of the vision cage almost daily to humidify the air and ceiling radiant heat. Her incubation coil often failed to cover these eggs, and the flexwatt heat sat about 6 inches above the top eggs in the cage.
I moved the egg mass intact into my substrate free incubator set at 90 with a helix thermostat, and my temp gun is reading closer to 88-89. the first head was out last PM 5/10, and about half have pipped this AM. I was fully prepared for incubation time to exceed 90 days with her maternal surface egg temps being so low but again who knows how often she would cycle the temps up on her own when i was sleeping etc.
thought i would share.
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