Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello- Eggs were laid 6/13 and look pretty good so far. When holding up a pen light to one, blood vessels can be seen ,but pretty much hollow. How long untill it should look like a snake in there? Dave. P.S. Greybands.

The eggs will look hollow all the way to the end. They are mostly filled with fluid.

Your eggs are good if you see red blood vessels.
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Peter Jolles
East Coast Colubrids
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com
peterjolles@eastcoastcolubrids.com

This question is somewhat common over on the monitor forum. So I have a thought out response to this question, Why would you candle a reptile egg.

There are several reasons I ask this, one if your eggs were bad, your nose and eyes would have already informed you.

Also, candling cannot and will not improve the chances of your eggs hatching. Candling can only cause harm. Or cause nothing at best.

I get the feeling candling is for bird eggs, even better for chicken eggs in an incubator. This that case, you would throw out eggs that did not candle an embryo. I ask, are you going to throw out reptile eggs if you do not see something? I think you will do what we all do, wait until they look like raisens, and have bushes growing out of them. Heck with kingsnakes, even some of those hatch. So, if the eggs look good, then they are good. They are always die, rot, go south, later, or hatch. Good luck with them. FR

I had some eggs this year that appeared to be fertile at arm's length. I candled them and could see that they were yellow inside and did not have blood vessels.

Good eggs will have blood vessels and will appear to have a red or pink hue to them as you view them with a flashlight. "Dead" or infertile eggs can appear to be white and leathery (i.e, "fertile" at first glance but can indeed be non-viable eggs.

I am not sure if these rotting eggs hurt the good ones. I am sure that they do not help.

Further, it is exciting to see the thick vessels leafing all through the egg. It lets you know that there is actually a tiny snake developing in there. For me, it keeps me motivated during the 2 month incubation.
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Peter Jolles
East Coast Colubrids
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com
peterjolles@eastcoastcolubrids.com

why waste space with unfertile eggs! It is a matter of opinion whether candling the eggs hurts them somehow and my opinion is that it is perfectly safe if you don't move the eggs around too much.

.. after a few weeks you can tell if its bad anyway and then toss it.

I even put the ones I know are bad in with the good because you just never know fo surr.

I have maggots eating off eggs attached to good ones all the way to hatch date and it does seem to effect them.

Have maggots or mold EVER killed a good egg? I don't know but its a good question so please answer it.

Hah Hah - just kidding!

Hey - I know you are right. Testament to this is the fact that I had eggs go bad, turn green and yellow, and then grow slimy orange mold. The mold then creeped onto good eggs and started growing on the good eggs also. Well, the good eggs that had the "overflow" mold also hatched.

I just like to candle and it keeps me going during the LLLOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGGG 60 or - days to hatching!
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Peter Jolles
East Coast Colubrids
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com
peterjolles@eastcoastcolubrids.com

All of the eggs were good, but still got a maggot infestation. Several of the beardies hatched out with open umbilical areas...when I applied betadine to them maggots came rolling out. It was gross, but several of the babies actually survived.

I have no idea where they came from or how they got into the babies, but I still try to keep rotten funk away from my eggs now.

Just one data point among thousands....

Mike

Yes, in my experience (hatching out European grass snake eggs) I did loose some eggs to tiny maggots, because they penetrated the outer shell and caused fluid to leak out a few weeks to early and I lost two partially developed babies. But it only happened once though (while I was in Germany).

Zee

Zee,

Sprechen sie deutsch? HaHa I was born in Austria so my first language was german.

Have you heard of any tricks to get rid of knats? They are all over my eggs and I hate them.

Hallo Rainer! Ich habe dich gesehen wenn du in Florida warst!
In other words, I saw you (and spoke to you briefly) at a reptile show about 2 years ago - I think it was at the F.I.R.E. near Orlando. You had a table set up there, so I'm sure you don't remember me. I'll be in Daytona this year how about you?
About the nasty gnats: The only way I got rid of them is the hard way - wiping them off the eggs every day until there were no more. At the same time you MUST make sure that the eggs are in airtight containers until about a week before they hatch (done it this way for many years and been very successful. Then the gnats can't harm them IF they enter again.
Thw only reason I had gnats on those grass snake eggs is because I THOUGHT the container was airtight - it wasn't!!! Those pesky gnats are so tiny, they'll find the smallest crack/hole to enter and then go for straight for the eggs!
Hope to see you in Daytona!

Auf wiedersehn or Tsuesch!

Zee

Again, candling will never turn a bad egg good. Do you agree? But you can mishandle or harm the egg while candling. Not that you will, just that its possible, is that true???

So there is absolutely no advantage gained by candling. The only thing it does it make your face get all weird, as you wonder about what you saw. hahahahahahahaha.

Now the subpoint and the real point, those with experience know what a good egg looks like and or marginal egg or a bad egg, they do not need to candle.

The ones who feel a strong need to candle are the newbies, inexperienced ones ect. Also, whos more likely to make a mistake and drop eggs, or do some like take eggs out of the incubator and open them in an air conditioned room and get to see them pop. The people without experience.

What is absolutely best for eggs is to leave them alone. They are only going to do one of two things, hatch or not. Thats it.

So Peter I ask you and I want an honest answer. If you candle an egg and it is white, full, with no fungus or discoloration, and you do not see any development, what are you going to do??????? Are you going to throw it out???? Heck no, your going to wait until it meets the symtons of a bad egg, fungus, discolored, shriveled up, etc.

What was the purpose of candling? no purpose what so ever. Its a tool of the impatient.

The best thing to teach newbies is patience. Is that not true?

Answers please. FR

np
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Peter Jolles
East Coast Colubrids
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com
peterjolles@eastcoastcolubrids.com

Please, I beg you, I will leave you alone... Please, just leave me alone.

I can't take it anymore!!!!
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Peter Jolles
East Coast Colubrids
www.eastcoastcolubrids.com
peterjolles@eastcoastcolubrids.com

There is nothing wrong with a "newbie" candling an egg. I have had eggs that looked horrid and have hatched but guess what, I candled them to see if there was an embryo in the egg. I don't see the point of sitting on unfertilized eggs. That's my opinion and I am sticking with it.

I theeeenk what we are looking at is years of practical approach.

Yeah....I am getting that but what is wrong with knowing whether or not you have fertile eggs? Is it that big of a deal? You know some folks do things a little different and there is nothing wrong with that.

lol, this is the single most intense topic i have seen on the site, and ya im a noob, but i havent heard of "candeling", i guess you just look at the eggs with a light, but though im a "noob" to most of yall lol, i would never do that. not because i dought that it might work, but because when the times comes when i am in that position, that first clutch is so precious to me that i know that its best to let them be, and observe them as little as i can, though it would be hard to do as you guys understand, and just to do everything i can to make sure that they are good, healthy eggs. i cant wait till 2007 and 2008, because that is when the magic happens for my brooksi, you guys just wait till i post pics of my new, beautiful little neonates on here, o you will see, you will see. btw, i know this is not the right topic, but man, you guys know so much, having only just completed 7th grade life science, all these huge words are going to take some time for me to learn lol! but hey, i have 2 years, so i guess until then i should just kick back and read the posts u guys are making lol
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i have one Brooks Kingsnake, hopefully breeding in the next couple of years! yaaahhhh, only if i can find a male though lol, but im still looking for a male lol

I had 100% of them hatch into healthy little snakes. It's really not as big of a project as it sounds. It's a mtter of taking a flashlight to the egg to see blood vessels and blood in the egg. That's all!!!! Simple as that!

ya i no its not a big deal, but i would rather just not, i want the incubator to do that for me, thats what there for lol, plus, im talking about kings here, and so ive herd that they can be pretty wierd when it comes to eggs lol
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i have one Brooks Kingsnake, hopefully breeding in the next couple of years! yaaahhhh, only if i can find a male though lol, but im still looking for a male lol

.

My middle name should be denial. After waiting through winter for spring and finally getting eggs I keep just about every egg that pops out of a female. Tiny ones, mushy ones, and every other type of egg that does not appear fertile. In my limited experience,,,,the egges I have felt were good always hatch and the ones the looks crummy do not. Will I continue to keep the ugly eggs at least for a while anyway? Yes I will LOL I have seen many pics of awful looking eggs that hatched out perfect offspring. That is enough motivation for me Tom Stevens

lol...when I die I'm pretty sure she'll keep me around for a week or so just to make sure.

She is ever the optimist, but you know...she's been right before.

Mike

nice, im sure that your wife would like to know that you relate her with snake eggs lol, jk, but ya, i agree, im keeping all the eggs just to make sure, ya no
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i have one Brooks Kingsnake, hopefully breeding in the next couple of years! yaaahhhh, only if i can find a male though lol, but im still looking for a male lol

Yes, eggs are good or not and they will hatch or not. Your point is right. However there is a reason to candle. Most new breeders find their perfectly good looking eggs not hatching and going bad and they start all kinds of worrying about what they did wrong with the incubation process when the eggs that looked good and didn't hatch maybe weren't fertile to start with. Candling will let them know from the start. Not from the first day however but a week or so later. Also, dropping an egg, it getting turned even a week before hatching won't hurt the embryo either. Doesn't mean you should do it but for the newcommers they can rest easy, a good egg should hatch regardless of mold, being turned, etc. HDEAN

First I never said theres anything wrong with candling, I just do not seen the point. There are lots of different kinds of eggs, with some eggs, torts/chickens, etc, an infertile egg looks exactly like a fertile egg. In these cases, yes candling is useful.

With snake eggs, its very obvious which are unfertile and which are fertile. I am positive you understand this, don't you? There are tweeners, and if someone said, the egg they candled was one of those, I would understand. Isn't this all about understanding?

I would imagine, the task for newbies would be to learn the difference between good eggs and bad eggs, its very very simple.

If someone said, I candle eggs to learn and view how the embryo progresses, I would say, wonderful(and it is)

The whole exercise is to converse about eggs, yet all it comes to is, agree or disagree or right or wrong, when again you know, its far more then that.

I asked if candling can make a bad or dead egg get better, no one would answer that, except you, thank you. I asked if candling can harm an egg, the answer is yes it can. But I do agree with you, strong eggs are "strong" after all, they do squeeze thru the females bum.

I had hoped the conversation would have led to how to tell the difference without interfering with the egg. But of course you also know, people are a bit too insecure to do that.

I know you understand that on these forums, you are always wrong, no matter what you do, someone will feel much better by telling you how wrong you are. Crossing/hybrids are wrong, candling is wrong, hibernating/brumating is wrong, this is wrong, that is wrong, etc etc. The truth is, none of it is right or wrong, that is after you get past the keeping a wild animal in a box. That has to be wrong but we will deal with that in our next lives. Or killing all those mice, oh yea.

So Henry, how often do you candle eggs now? Thanks for playing, FR

that I can not throw away an egg until it caves in and barely resembles an egg. Let's look at this from one different angle. If you have a clutch of eggs that appear fertile, and you candle them to find 7 have veins and 3 do not....do you automatically throw away the 3 with no veins? I would not. Therefor I do not candle for the most part, once in a while just for kicks to see if I see anything. But I have never candled an entire clutch one egg at a time, I was always in a hurry to get them set up and in my incubator. I do not tihnk anyone is saying do nto candle eggs...it is a bad thing to do. It just seems that in most cases it is not neccesary because whatever the results most of us keep every sigle egg anyway. Tom Stevens
if what I just said was already said I apologise...

FR, I hardly candle at all now. The only ones I candled this year where some new hybrids breedings that I wanted to see at least if they were fertilized or not. Most of the good looking eggs(nice bright white ones) candled good. This helped me decide whether to 2nd clutch the same pairing or not and to help decide whether to sell the parents off since the main expo I attend will be before the eggs hatch. So I now only candle a few clutches. Newbies ask all kinds of questions regarding eggs good or not and when they go bad they think the kept them too hot, too cold, too moist , too dry, they touched them, the egg next to it had mold, they accidentily moved it and it rolled over. It my experience and in an experiment I di it didn't matter. A good fertilized egg will hatch regardless of our interference as long as there are no underlying birth defects, genetic problems. You are right it isn't necessary to candle and an egg is good or bad regardless of what we do. But as you can see, even a breeder with 25 years experience still occassionaly candles some eggs. Good discussion though. I am adding the experiment I did below for you to comment on.
I decided to started an experiment using 4 good snake eggs(veins when candled). I wanted to know if turning snake eggs would hurt them. I know there is no reason to turn snake eggs and I don't recommend it but I was curious if all the talk about turning snakes eggs making them go bad was just as incorrect as most other don'ts such as (don't touch them with your bare hands, keep them at 100% humidity, don't let moldy eggs stay attached to good ones, keep at a constant temperature, etc). Most of these don'ts have proven to be false and are used as excuses when eggs go bad. Some just go bad and some were never fertilized even though they looked good. Things happen.

The experiment:

I started with 4 eggs from a Leucistic Texas Rat Snake that were layed on 6-28-99. I waited until I could candle all 4 eggs and see great veins in them. I decided to turn the eggs at different stages to see if it would hurt them. All were turned and none were to be at their original layed postion when hatching. Following is the turning schedule.

EGG ONE-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one half turn to the right and never bothered it again.

EGG TWO-- On 7-7-99 I turned it one quarter turn to the right and I turned it one quarter turn to the right every week until 8-21-99 with it being turned one and three quarters turns total.

EGG THREE--I turned this egg one half turn to the right on 8-4-99 about one half the way through incubation and never bothered it again.

EGG FOUR-- On 7-7-99 I turned this egg one half turn to the right and on 8-4-99 one half turn to the right again and on 8-21-99 one half turn to the right again for a total of one and one half total times.

All four eggs hatched on 9-4-99 with 4 perfect males.

Even though this grouping is too small for any real scientific findings it does show that in this case using Luecistic Texas Rat Snake eggs that turning them at these times did no harm.

I wonder if the turning of the eggs gave you all males? LOL

Again....nothing really wrong with candling. If you are experienced and have seen a bunch of eggs than yeah you do know usually which ones are good and bad but that isn't always the case. Nothing wrong with satisfying your curiosity. Good post and interesting outcome. It's like that show Mythbusters...ever see it?

I used to do experiments with eggs when I was a kid. Cutting them open early, taking the developing snake out and watching it color up into a perfectly healthy neonate in a little butter tub. Fun stuff!!