Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've kept my eggs at a steady 78 in the past & had good results, just about 90 days on the dot, I had heard that much above 80 & you get some kinked spines (obviously wrong). What temps do you guys incubate at & anyone willing to chip in a horror story about wrong temp or bad conditions and lost young?

david, my experience has been somewhat different. 115 days [ or -] @ about 80* every year. last year was the longest at 117 days. no kinks or other problems. i 'think' the longer they're in egg, the bigger hatchlings you get making that all important 1rst pink that much easier to handle for them. good luck! are you going to hamburg this saturday? we'll be there.......dannio

My temps seem to fluctuate between 76.5 deg F and 80; and most of my eggs usually hatch at the 100-115 mark (boy do I wish indigo eggs hatched out like colubrids...too long of a wait!). Rob

I'm about the same as Rob, I use 76 as the lowest acceptable and 80 as the highest, but I try to shoot for 78.

I've never had a clutch pip earlier than 95 days, and usually it's more like 100 to 105 or more.

One year I let a friend incubate a cluch of my couperi eggs. He incubated them at about 80-83. It often went into the low 80's.

about 50% of the clutch had kinked tails. The same female bred with the same male the year before and the year after, I uncubated the eggs at 76-80 and had ZERO kinks.

I don't say, "always, never, or my way is THE way" but...
...draw your own conclusions from that. I did.

Drini,

I'm wondreing if there could be any genetic predisposition for this sort of thing as far as where the genes came from. {Geograpficly speaking}

In other words, would snakes in say, Naples, Florida have a higher normal incubation temp. range than say snakes in Dothan, Alabama? And would that be accomidated for by evolution, and therefore cause a difference in physiological needs based on geographic origin of anscestry?
Tony.