Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey,

I had a female lay 9 good eggs. I removed them, placed them in the vermiculite/lucite mix (may have misspelled those!), but them in a hovabator incubator, put in a water dish for evaporation, sprayed the eggs every other day and kept the substrate moist. Despite that, the humidity never got above 60%, though I kept temps at 89 degrees. The eggs literally cooked except one on the bottom, just gradually shriveling up. Upon inspection, I found that they were good eggs, and my wife and I just feel terrible....

What could we have done to successfully incubate these eggs? We were thinking of putting them over spaghnum moss and using heat tape under a rubbermaid...which works to keep humidity up for my brazilian rainbows...

Any help is appreciated, as we'd like to continue breeding ball pythons, we just feel awful that we did such an injustice to our first clutch...

Thanks a mil,

Stevo

Sorry to hear about the eggs We have an incubator now but the first clutch we ever hatched was incubated in a regular camping cooler. It worked just as well as the set-up we have now. Take a regular camping cooler, run one strip of 3" heat tape around the sides about halfway up (putting the cords out through the water hole). Plug it into a thermostat and your incubator is set. You have to have a thermostat. We used a ranco on ours - it was cheap (only $68) and worked well for our little project. Have the thermostat sensor hang in about the center of the cooler.

Then there's the eggs. Put them in their own container with a lid to keep the moisture in (with a lid you should occasionally air out the container to provide oxygen). The substrate mixture should be vermiculite/perlite. Make a mixture of the dry ingredients with 1 part perlite to 2 parts vermiculite. Then add 1 part water for every 5 parts dry mixture. This should make the substrate just moist enough to clump in your hand.

My last advice: throw the hovabator away. You aren't the first person to ruin eggs in one of those things.

Laura

I was very happy to get 9 clutches this season, and so far I haven't had any incubation problems. Its an old freezer with a couple zoo-med mats, 2 small pc fans, and an awsome temp controller.

And heres the temp controller.
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www.NEWReptiles.com

How did you make the necessary cuts for those peep windows ?
Did you use a sawsall ?(sawszall?)

Yours...just may be the one i copy after all,lol.

What type of thermostat did you use? Also, I take it those are thermometers going into each of the individual containers? Lastly, you are not using any substrate with those eggs, right? I don't see any, and I was just wondering why you prefer using this method (pros vs. cons)? Thanks!

It looks like he has a thermostat for each of the 2 heat mats,and then a thermometer probe(Daily min/max readings too i bet.)in each of the other tubs.

I gotta get mine built !

Hey,

Do you drill holes in the rubbermaids and if so, where? What do you put in with the eggs? How are you regulating temps? What kind of thermosdat is that? How did you cut into the fridge & make it so perfect looking?

Thanks for sharing!

Stevo

1. The thermostat (temp controller) is a Watlow Series 96 Control. This unit can be hooked up directly to my PC. I can adjust, moniter, and get live graphs. This option is not yet hooked up as my eggs started coming and I didn't want to monkey with it when there were eggs in it.

2. I use no substrate. I have been doing this for a few seasons and have had 0 problems thus far.

3. I drill one small hole in the center of each egg bin, this allows for a thermometer in each bin. overkill, maybe, but I want to make sure all goes well.

4. There is only one temp comtroller.

5. The windows were easy, a friend and I just pulled the door, took the inside off the door, and then made the cuts. I also used new insulation in the door as I figured that is where I'd lose the most heat.

Here are a few more pics. In one of the pics the thermo panel looks like crap, that is because I hooked up CCTV so I could moniter the temps from my desk about 45 feet away.

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www.NEWReptiles.com

Do you have the turbo model? If so, you should disconnect the fan. All I use are hovabators and I have not lost a single egg. If you like, I can provide details of my setup.
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Jay A. Martin

Jay,

Yes! I was going to e-mail you, but then I thought the info would be much more useful to other users if we posted it.

Any info you have would be great about your setup, though i really like the used fridge idea!

God bless,

Stevo

When starting out, keep it simple. The following setup has worked quite well for me in the past. Get a Hovabator with the expansion ring. This will allow you to put your eggs into a container that will fit into the Hovabator. The purpose of this inner chamber is to help retain humidity and shield your eggs from temperature fluctuations. This inner chamber should have some air circulation holes in the sides. If you don’t have an expansion ring, don’t stress about it. Next, I use a vermiculite/perilite mixture. I add warm water until I am able to squeeze the vermiculite mixture in my hand and it holds its form (without dropping excess amounts of water). Try to keep your eggs in the center of the Hovabator. This will shield the eggs from higher temps when near the heating element. I place the eggs inside and cover from ½ to ¾ the surface of the eggs – ¾ if not using an inner chamber – in the vermiculite mixture. I set my temp at 89 degrees and let them go. Once a week or once every 10 days, I will add fresh air. This also gives me a chance to inspect the eggs. I do not use a hygrometer to check humidity. As long as my windows are full of moisture, I know my humidity is where it needs to be. Periodically, you may need to spray around the eggs.

If you have an accurate temperature probe, use it in the center of the eggs. If you can, use some other device to maintain temps, like a Helix controller. The Hovabator “wafer” does work but will fluctuate 1-2 degrees. This has not been a problem for me in the past, however.

HTH!
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Jay A. Martin

Just one of the peices of heat tape is hooked up...we just didn't feel like taking the others out. Well this is my first clutch.....but so far so good...I can't tell you I've got 100% production...cause I have my first and only clutch in there...
I've got a Helix hooked up to the tape and the fan and have another thermometer/hygrometer to get another reading and humidity reading.

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Luke Martin
Bronze Serpent Reptiles