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If i have the females in a rack system can i just cover the entire bottom of the cage with fine milled sphagnum peat moss? or do i dtill need to put another box in the rack system for them?

Aaron

I did the entire box but then again mine was the long stem kind and the box was probably small enough to make her feel secure. I left just enough room for a water dish in the front and still had to fish a little extra moss out of it from time to time. Again, this is the only time I've tried maternal incubation and from what I've heard lots of different things also work fine but it was a blast and I'm thinking about trying it again for some of them this year. I will try hard to resist the temptation to get the moss too wet.

More info on my one experience

Randy,
If it worked so well, why not do maternal incubation on all of your clutches? I'm not busting your chops, just trying to understand and maybe learn a thing or two. You're never too old to learn!
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RDR FORUM

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Edited on February 18, 2004 at 10:15:12 by phwyvern.

The jury is still out on how well it did for the female. She stopped eating early this fall and isn't in the best weight but then again what can you tell from only one (maybe she would have been the same with either type of incubation). I know I enjoyed it but it did make me nervous since I don't have as much experience with it as with incubators so I'm not ready to switch everything over to maternal. I think I'll continue to experiment with maternal incubation with my less important clutches (for the sake of my nerves) and better conditioned females.

That was my other concern....the stress it puts on the snake. I would think that it WOULD be harder on the snake, being without food for such a long time. Have you noticed when you pull the eggs if the mother goes back to feeding right away? Heck, I know a guy who does maternal incubation just because he is afraid to pull the mom off the eggs!!! Anyway, it's probably better if you give the female a year off if you allow her to stay on her eggs until they hatch. I'm sure, in some cases, the females have been able to regain the weight by the next breeding season ,but, then are the following years' babys smaller than previous? or smaller clutch size? Has anyone done research on this that you know of? I would be interested to see the results of any studies!

Robert Cornbrooks (aka FATA$$)
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RDR FORUM

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Edited on February 18, 2004 at 10:14:50 by phwyvern.

Come about 2 weeks after a female has laid and is taken from the eggs, and about 2 months before ovulation. I would never switch to maternal. Artificial is much too easy and too successful to bother with anything else.

For GTP's however.............. well, I might just experiment with a clutch of Jungles this year to get the hang of it.
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I'm not sure I'm ambitious enough to do a real study (a bunch of snakes randomly assigned to two groups and actually keeping records). Maybe some day... It should be done though as I wouldn't necessarily assume that recovery will be better when the eggs are pulled (it makes sense but sometimes things don't work out the way we think they should). Perhaps they will tend to feed better in the shorter recovery time after maternal incubation and do as well or better than with a longer slower recovery. Hard to say what all the variables might be without trying it to find out.

Last year i had a female lay eggs and i took her off the eggs and it took her almost 1.5 months to start feeding again. She seemed to stay in the same spot the eggs were laid. Kinda wierd but she started eating again and hopefully will produce again this year.

Aaron

Best to change the substrate and wash the cage. Gets rid of the smell. But that was 1.5 months. Leave the female ON the eggs, and its TWO months MINIMUM. So even though it took 6 weeks for you to get her to eat, it was still 2 weeks SOONER than the minimum you could get with maternal.
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How do you do your eggs Mr. Cornbrooks? Any pictures of hatchlings from last year? I am never too old to learn. Please share your statistics for other forum readers. What morphs are you breeding this year? Thanks........
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RicK @ BbI

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