Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After 75 days of incubation (daytime: 27-28,5 °C; nightime: 25-26 °C) yesterday my first baby hatched successfully. Photo.

Today no other baby slit the eggs and a foul odor was to feel....

I opened all the remaining 5 eggs.
2 eggs contain dead full term babies.
Fortunatly 3 other eggs contain still living babies with blood vessels.... I hope they will hatch... but the question is: why this 2 deaths, and why is it so difficult for the babies to hatch ?!! Have I done well to open all the remaining eggs and to put them again in the incubator ?

Ruggero

http://utenti.quipo.it/palawan/neo.JPG

Since one of the babies pipped, probably all of them are within a week of pipping, so I don't think slitting the eggs open will hurt. Sometimes I do that with a clutch when the first one pips to make it easier for the others to pip. Some species of snakes seem to have more difficulty getting out of the egg for some reason...Indigos seem to have that problem sometimes.

As far as the egg-deaths...it happens. Sometimes it can be attributable to incubation temperatures, humidity levels, etc. Sometimes it defies analysis.

The one thing you never want to do is to manually remove the baby snake from the egg when it pips. When they are hatching, they will go in and out of the egg and sort of stay in there with there heads out...sometimes for a couple of days. Part of what's happening is that they are clearing the embryotic fluid from their lungs and getting ready to breath air. If you take them out before they are ready, many times they will die in a few days from the fluid still on their lungs. Just let them come out on their own when they are ready.

Thank you very much, Oldherper... you are a friend !

I hope for the three babies left... and then I have other 7 Spilotes eggs in incubation...and the first female is probably full of eggs again....

Here is the picture of the two dead babies I've extracted.

Ruggero

http://utenti.quipo.it/palawan/tot.JPG

So you'll just slit a half inch or so and let the baby find the slit on its own?

Also, how are the temps of these spilotes incubated compared to other's experience?

Joe

Joe,
Are you asking that to me or ruggero? If you are asking me, I wasn't speaking of Spilotes pullatus specifically, but of snakes in general. I don't breed Tiger Rats and never have (although I think they are cool snakes), so I can't talk to incubation parameters for them specifically.

-So you'll just slit a half inch or so and let the baby find the
- slit on its own?

Yes: I've made a hole, covered with its shell... I suppose the babies won't encounter any difficulty to find their ways out...

- Also, how are the temps of these spilotes incubated compared
- to other's experience?

Last year I had 2 good eggs incubated at 29-30 °C and the babies died fully grown.
This year I used lower temp. (27 °C or so) and I think the temperatures are fine: I've read they can vary between 25 and 30.
Humidity was not to high, but the next time I'll incubate even drier... the shell are very very thick, and it was difficult for me to cut them...

The only thing I can change is humidity (I'll incubate drier) and use an incubating box with holes on the bottom, above water, with rather dry substrate (this year I used aquarium filter, I don't know the english name, but it was used very successfully by another Spilotes breeder in Europe).

Ruggero

...it could also be, I think (and not only I) that nothing is wrong in incubation.... the only thing is that in three months incubation in nature the shell becomes more thin and soft because of bacterial processes, thing that during artificial incubation simply doesn't happen...

What do you think about this hypotesis ?
The same is written in the german book of the image-link...
(Inkubation von Reptilieneier von Gunther Koelher)

http://utenti.quipo.it/palawan/abbau.JPG