Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone had experience with maternal incubation? I know everyone recommends removing the eggs ad incubating them artificially, but I think that maternal incubation is a fascinating aspect of python behaviour. I have only had very poor results, however.

I have tried giving three females (breitensteini)plastic nest-boxes containing woodshavings, newspaper and vermiculite, repectively. Only five eggs from the vermiculite box hatched, the hatchlings weighed from 25 - 50g and one died shortly after.Anyone know what a normal hatchling weight is? The others came along fine however. So only five hatchlings out of around 45 eggs.Any ideas?

Mark Hanger

I have never tried maternal incubation and probably never will. Reason is that it is my opinion that a female in the wild has a vast area to find the perfect spot she knows is right for her and her clutch. In captivity despite our best efforts can not provide the differant needs each female has for each clutch, every one being slightly differant. Now these are just the opinions of a man who is still enamored with watching the birth of his second child and the fact that though medicine can control almost every aspect of child birth it has no control over a mother knowing when the right time to push is. you can make her push but you can not give a medicine to make her feel the "need" which is the "right time" now I am a dad so I am unable to explain "need" to push but let me tell you, you can see a "need"......... Oh crap I did it again, off on a tangent. Anyway this is my opinion why maternal incubation is inconsistant even in the most contoled atmosphere.
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Kevin
I am lost w/o spell check
"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."-unknown

Mark,
I have had extensive experience with maternal incubation in bivittatus in the past, but the few times I have produced brongersmai I have always pulled the eggs; however I have been thinking lately about trying maternal incubation with them next time as well. I would avoid wood shavings and newspaper as an incubation substrate. I had always used long-fiber sphagnum with the burmese and have never had any problems associated with it’s use. Just soak it in a tub of water for a short time and wring out most of the excess water before use. The two keys to any successful maternal incubation effort are maintaining cage humidity above 90% at all times and maintaining nest box temps 2 to 3 degrees below the optimum incubation temp for the species. Female pythons can raise the temp of the egg mass slightly through various means, but it is impossible for her to lower the temp if it becomes too elevated. I have seen brongersmai physiologically thermoregulate right after laying, but I believe they probably don’t have the outstanding temp. control capabilities of bivittatus. I have always found it extremely interesting and female pythons obviously know better how to hatch their eggs than we do if given the proper environmental conditions. With bivittatus, I always had better hatch rates with maternal incubation than with the few times I have used artificial incubation. I don’t believe it was the incubator design, as it worked well with other python species that I have used it for. I would be interested to hear if anyone else on this forum has used maternal incubation with the curtus group. As far as hatchling weights, I only have experience with brongersmai. They typically run 80 to 110 grams. I believe breitensteini and curtus would be slightly lighter, probably 60 to 90 grams if I had to guess.

Kelly

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for the imput - I have also tried maternal incubation with Burmese without success, using vermiculite.Your idea of using spagnum moss sounds interesting, as well as keeping the temperature on the low side.Interestingly, the females seem to have consistently removed the remote thermostat probe that I placed in the middle of the clutch - whether this was deliberate or accidental as the mother moved around in the nest-box, I don't know.However this may have resulted in periodically too high temperatures.

Mark

Mark,
I am curious as to what temp you had the thermostat set on your heating system. A female burmese will maintain the egg mass at approx. 92 degrees F regardless of the surrounding ambient temp (to a point). If the probe was in her coils, and I would assume set for less than 92 degrees, the cage temp. could drop drastically and the thermostat would never kick on. If the cage temp dropped too low, even a thermoregulating female would have problems keeping the egg mass temp at 92 F for proper incubation. Having the probe pushed out of the egg mass by the female would only be a problem if the thermostat was set for a temp above 92 degrees F, as this could cause overheating of the eggs. The probe should be placed just a few inches outside the coils and only monitor the ambient temp at the level of the nest box interior. I would typically shoot for an ambient temp of 87 to 89 degrees. It is best to 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 becomes too elevated. The key is to keep her from expending an inordinate amount of energy during the incubation period. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Kelly