Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Newbies are often concerned about fungus or mold on their snakes' eggs. Between scrubbing them and dusting them and trying to separate them, I think more harm than good is sometimes done.

Here's a picture of a clutch of eggs I'm waiting on. They're from a snow Hondo X a double het for snow Hondo, and they're 65 days old, due to start hatching
in a day or two.

The egg on top of the pile went bad almost immediately. Yes, I dusted it with some antifungal footpowder, and no, as you can see, the powder did not eliminate the fungal growth. The second egg started going bad five or six weeks into incubation. That was more than a month ago, so as can be seen, the fungus did not spread to the other eggs. I accept the theory that bad eggs can sprout fungus and that fungus will not affect good eggs.

The same two snakes' first clutch, by the way, contained 11 eggs, 10 of which were good; this clutch contained 8 eggs, 6 of which still look good.

peace
terry

are you using sphagnum for all your eggs?
have you considered perlite?

Just curious - not saying that has anything to do with anything,
I switched to it many years ago and haven't looked back since.
Joe

>>are you using sphagnum for all your eggs?
>>have you considered perlite?
>>
Hi Joe,

Yes, I'm using sphagnum for everything. Maybe just familiarity--it works for me, so why change. The fact that four or five eggs out of the last 85 (2nd clutches) sprouted the white furries wouldn't seem to me to be the result of the incubation medium, but who knows. Anyway, maybe next year i should incubate 2 or 3 clutches that are less important to me (just in case i do something wrong) in perlite and broaden my horizons. What, exactly, are your instructions?

terry