Reptile & Amphibian Forums

On May 6 my 14 ft albino het laby laid a huge pile of egg, alot sooner then I had expected. By the time we found her around the eggs they had already begun to stick together so I decided that self incubation would be best, I have a thermostat hooked up to her cage and the little temp guage is in her coils. I have it set to 85 degrees (above it would turn off and below it would turn on) I have a huge water bowl in her cage and have been told to mist. I need as much advise from everyone that I can get.
Thanks,
Krystle Treadwell

Just ensure that you do not directly mist the eggs themselves. I personaly do not have any experience in this specic area but from all I have learned is that you do not want the eggs themselves to get to wet. Hope this helps a little, TOdd

Krystle,
I can probably give you a few pointers on this. I used maternal incubation probably 95% of the time when I was producing burmese years ago. If set up properly, I believe maternal incubation with this species is superior to artificial incubation every time. As long as there are not a large number of infertile eggs, you shouldn’t have any problems. The first thing I would do is remove the temp. gauge from her coils. You have it set at about the right temperature, you just don’t want it in her coils. She will thermoregulate the egg mass at about 92 degrees F regardless of the surrounding temperature (to a point), which means the cage temp. could drop drastically and the thermostat would never kick on. If you are heating from under the cage floor, place the probe on the substrate. If you are heating the air, then have the probe above the floor. Seal the cage as well as possible to keep the humidity up. I always had a nest box lined with damp sphagnum moss, which was surrounded by containers of water with paper towels sticking out of the surface. These acted as wicks to increase the evaporative surface and increase humidity. The humidity needs to be maintained above 80%. Every few days I would mist across the top of the female and let it run down on the eggs, but don’t over do it. This will help keep the micro-climate around the eggs moist. In their natural environment, the female on the eggs would be exposed to rain events, so this is not an issue. You just don’t want the eggs setting directly in standing water. Watch her contractions and count how many she has per minute. I tried to keep it between 4 and 8 per minute. If it is above 10 per minute you should raise the cage temp. slightly, as she is expending too much energy to keep the egg mass temp up. If less than 3 or 4 per minute, the cage temp. is probably too high and she has no way to lower the egg mass temperature if it gets too high. The key is to keep her from expending an inordinate amount of energy during the incubation period. If she dropped on May 6th, the eggs will hatch on July 1st. With maternal incubation, burmese eggs will virtually always hatch on day 56. Good luck and let us know how it progresses.

Kelly

Kelly is right on with his advice. I, too, have bred burms (and many other python species) and allowed the females to brood their own eggs. Personally, I feel it is much better and my "mothers" seemed to bounce back just fine after the 50-60 day brooding process. Depending on the behavior of the mother, you can also add water via a long plastic syringe so that you can target certain areas....but be very careful as many mother burms cna be quite protective of their eggs. Good luck. Rob