Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, this is our first clutch of the season, and this females first year producing. She laid 3 eggs and 1 slug on 4/25. Anyone have any experience with this happening and is there anything that can be done to save it? If it does go bad will it affect the other eggs?

Thanks for your help, Des

that looks a little too gross to be viable. Especially if it's a brand new egg. Not that I'm experienced enough with eggs to be an authority but I also have an egg that started molding 3 weeks ago. It looked possibly salvageable but still has 3 weeks left and as of last night was starting to collapse already and the shell is softening up. Even if it was to hatch, it's only half grown. I'm gonna keep taking care of it but I'm not holding my breath. That's what I would recommend. Take care of it as if it's healthy until it becomes obvious that there's no hope for it.

Get those eggs off that perlite and put them on some vermiculite. At the very least, I would mix some vermiculite in it. It's hard to keep up the humidity with just perlite. I use perlite for some monitor eggs, but never ball pythons.

It won't save that egg, but at least your others won't dry out. Some people might have success with perlite only, but you better have a good incubator that controls the humidity.

Seeing as how those eggs were only laid 3 days ago, they all look pretty ratty. I'm guessing, by the looks of the outside, that they are dehydrating, and all will look like the gross one very soon (the perlite also looks "not wet". I woudl mix in some warm water if you haven't already and the pic is a poor indication of the moistness of the substrate.
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www.strictlyballs.ca

see the green starting inside....bacteria.........it is dead.......it is sweating and brown and now turning green.it will turn more and more green and smell really badly as time goes on.....

as for the other 2.......

they look like the female needed alot more calcium?..I think.help me here people.are the spots and dents from calcium deficiency?.........

anyways...........feed her really really well and she'll be fine ..........the eggs will hatch with 89 degree temps and proper humidity it looks like...........

make sure they are humid enough.......perlite tends to dry out on top faster than vermiculite in my opinion.......
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You could try it this way too.(Thanks again JP)
I tried vermiculite and 2 were almost mushy within 13 days.(Due to a higher than needed water content i assume.)So i sent this route for the eggbox.

Its day 23 now and they all seem to be doing fine.

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Charles Glaspie

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Charles Glaspie

The girl was probably calcium deficient and/or not fit to be bred.

This happened to us last year and the eggs actually looked worse than yours. 4 out of 5 did make it.

I will try to dig up pics of the clutch
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www.NEWReptiles.com

How can you tell if a female is calcium deficient before breeding her? The female was almost 1500 grams when she was bred.

Thanks, Des

.feed her well fed rodents....enough of them.and get her to 3500 grams......she'll be fine.....

you can't tell unless they are too small....too young....or too thin........

.........they'll still hatch...........
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