Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Id like to get evryones thoughts on the pros and cons of each.
Some pointers on hands on maternal incubation brooding experience would be great.
Thanks

It has been a topic for years. Its a preference thing, left upto the owner. One of the reasons people like to remove the mother is so they can get her back on food as soon as possible. That gives her a chance to put weight back on for the following season. I have also seen people feeding there females while they were still on the eggs. I have no personal experiance with maternal incubation. If it helps, Brian Gundy has a video on You Tube that shows his method. I actually use his method and have great success with it.
Brian Galley

I've only tried it once and back then didn't know you could feed while incubating but she ate great after they hatched and went again the next year. One of my priorities for this year is to switch my rack over to proportional thermostats and hope to try it some more next year. Does seem like a personal preference, hard to give up the control to mom but I really enjoyed seeing her see the eggs hatch.

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Randy Remington
anyone@snakemorphs.com
www.SnakeMorphs.com
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Did u do anything to prevent flies in the room or cage?

Flies are a good point to consider. In my case 9 years ago I had my collection in the basement in tubs with small air holes so not much access but guess it only takes one. Before I try it again I should pick the tubs carefully as some of mine might have big enough air holes for a fly to get through. I live in a very dry climate and use tubs with the lids on and soldering iron holes around the rim. The commercial racks with the mesh tops would be very hard to keep from being too dry here. But for the costal and Midwest keepers with those or even home made with narrower shelves with no lids for faster cleaning I could see it being much harder to keep flies out. Of course that's a possibility in the wild so maybe they aren't as big a problem as I would think.
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Randy Remington
anyone@snakemorphs.com
www.SnakeMorphs.com
FaceBook

I wonder if seeing her offspring hatch prompted her to be more likely to breed again the next season.
I'm sure after several seasons of her eggs "vanishing to a predator" her motherly instincts would say "why bother?"

Could be an interesting experiment.

We switched to maternal this year and it has been great.

Myth: Females will start eating faster, if you remove her clutch and then wash the tub and her to remove any sent of her clutch.
Truth: Females WILL eat while they are sitting on eggs if they are hungry. You don't need to wash any sent of the clutch off of her or the tub.

Like I said we switched this year. We started heating our reptile room and stopped using belly heat. The room is heated by a regular plug in oil radiator with the thermostat set at 86F. We use newsprint and a bowl of water. Nothing else. No cypress. No aspen. Worked great for us. Every one eats weekly for the most part with a few once every 2 weeks. The mothers on eggs ate every time food was offered. Don't think we will ever switch back. We will keep our incubator as a back up for if or when a female rolls out an egg or doesn't sit on the clutch. We did have a virgin (well was one) decide not to sit on her clutch, so that was put in the bator.

What part of the world do you live in and what sort of tubs/rack do you use? In the near desert west I don't think I could get away with just newspaper even with my unusual setup with lids on my tubs.
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Randy Remington
anyone@snakemorphs.com
www.SnakeMorphs.com
FaceBook

We live in CT. Built our own melamine rack and use Sterilite tubs, lids on, with several holes drilled on each end for air circulation. We added nothing extra with the females on clutches. Just kept everything the same. So far everything has been great minus of course the one first time mother not knowing what to do with her fisrt clutch.

My setup is similar to the above (room heat) and I just gave each female some sphagnum moss to help with humidity.