Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First time breeder here, and I think I may have made a bit of a mistake. I have my eggs set up in an improvised incubator and thought I had the dimmer switch set to maintain a constant 86 degree temp. I observed the setup for a few days and there was very little variation, so I put my egg container in.

I try and keep a pretty constant eye on the eggs, checking them at least once a day. Well, this afternoon my AC was messed up and it got pretty warm in my appartment. I didn't take that into account with the incubator. To make a long story short, the temp spiked up to around 93 degrees where the eggs are.

Two of the eggs now have deep indentions in them, but the others look fine. I misted the eggs and took them out of the incubator to let them cool down a little bit. The temp in there now is around 87-88. Like I said, the other 18 or 19 eggs look to be doing fine.

My question was... How bad will this be for the eggs? Does it automatically mean that they are cooked if they get up above 92 or do some of them still have a chance of making it? Thanks for the info.

Dave

Oh yeah, when I say misted, I mean I misted them from a bottle that I keep inside the incubator. The water stayes pretty much the same temp as the air in the incubator so as to avoide temp shock with cooler water. I just misted them to get the humidity back up.

Dave

They may be dead, they may not. Hope for the best and treat it as not. Find someway to keep them cooler (if your apartment is that hot, you can probably take them out of the incubator during the days at least (just keep them moist) (and covered if you expect them to hatch soon). Keeping a moist piece of newspaper over them will lower their temp slightly (evaporation).
Good Luck
Corinne
dragonfly@w-link.net

>>I think the 86 you are trying to maintain is too hot.
If you can't keep your temps down around 82 degrees then I would remove the eggs from the incubator.
I am not sure what the 92 degrees will do or has done but don't give up on the eggs yet.
You can put the eggs in a rubbermade shoe box or tupperware container or something similar and place it on top of a refrigerator or on top of a VCR or DVD player.
You would be surprised at how close to optimum temps these places maintain.
Just make sure to have minimal ventilation. Just enough for air but not air flow.
There are a lot of people that just keep their eggs in rooms that are kept around 80 degrees.
just some thoughts
Jimmy

Last year my kingsnake eggs were incubating and on day 50... the family went on an all day event, leaving EARLY in the morning and not getting back until 9 pm at night. It was one of those SUPER HOT days in Arizona... when we returned, it was 111 degrees OUTSIDE, and INSIDE the house was HOTTER. Our AC unit died right after we left (we assume) and the house just COOKED. Luckily I had a separate AC in the room with the mice, but the eggs were in the main house. I saw their temp was 99 degrees and despaired. I put them in the mouse room and the family left the house and went to a motel for the night. The next day... they were HATCHING! So I was lucky. This year I had a similar thing happen, but only a few days into incubation and the temps didn't get above 88 degrees, but it was there for 12 or more hours before I put the eggs in the mouse-house. I did lose one whole clutch from this incident (I surmise) from a gravid snake who hadn't yet laid her eggs.... she laid them a little while later, and they died about a week into incubation.

Best thing to do is just hope it all works out. Nothing you can do.
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~Sasheena

Heat can kill eggs. Cooler temps do not. When I used a Big Apple Incubator I had it set at 82 constant. Everything worked fine for years. 2 Years ago I moved and never set the incubator up. Like Sasheena I live in Arizona, only I live in the High Country at 5,000 ft in elevation so we rarely hit 100 degrees outside. The inside temps are in the low 80'2 and in fact I have had to turn the heater on a night as the outside temps were in the low 50's last week. Flagstaff was in the high 30's.

At night my room temp gets into the 70's quite a bit. My eggs are never at a constant temp and they hatch just fine. The only thing I noticed is that it takes longer for them to hatch (70 days). So don't be afraid to incubate your eggs at 78-82 degrees, that is a lot safer than the mid 80's or higher with peaks.

Kerby...