Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi boxie experts,

My eastern box female (found in East Texas) laid 2 eggs today and I carefully removed and placed them into a plastic incubator that I made myself. After putting them into damp vermiculite, I attached one of those adhesive heating pads to the bottom of the container, and then immersed the whole thing into a styrofoam box. The problem is, after plugging the heating pad in, the temp started to rise gradually to almost above 90 F. I made some slits in the plastic film cover that I put over the incubator but the temperature still remained pretty high, if not going higher. It's fogging up so I am sure it's humid. Should I unplug the heating pad so the eggs won't cook and just keep it at room temperature--around 79 F to 80F. I'm sort of annoyed since I paid $17 for that pad--which did work, just not to my benefit.

One more thing: I marked the top with a pen marker. I read somewhere that permanent markers can be toxic to eggs, but what about regular felt-tipped ones?

Thanks a lot! This is my first breeding attempt.

Not sure where you live, but here its near 90 everyday. All I do for my eggs is bury them about 2 inches in an aquarium full of top soil and put a heat light about 2 feet above the tank. The tank is in my un-airconditioned garage, so its as hot in there as it is outside. I then pour a little water every other day on each area of eggs to dampen it a bit. I do not record temperature, I just feel the ground and make sure it isnt hot. I hatched 14 eggs myself with this method last year in addition to the 11 babies I found in the pen. Every single baby is still alive today and doing fine.

As for marking the eggs, just put them in a little container as you dig them up and place them in the container exactly as you found them, then place them in your incubator just as you found them. Once in your incubator, don't touch them and you wont have to worry about remembering which end is the top. I lay some of my eggs on the side if I find them in the nest that way. They hatch just fine like that.

Monitoring your temperature to the exact degree is not necessary in my opinion. You think the temperature remains at a constant 80 degrees in the wild?