Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Over the years I have tried many incubation mediums such as vermiculite, spagnum, paper towel, (all of which are easy to get too wet) perlite and no substrate at all. I am also interested in trying fish filter media (see post below). Now it seems that the current trend in incubating is to try to get a humid environment while maintaining a comparatively drier substrate. While I do not doubt that this method tends to give good results, I don't understand how it correlates to what happens in the wild. I have never been lucky enough to find snake eggs in the wild but it seems to me that it would be difficult to find a wild environment that had very high humidity, like our incubators, and also had a dry substrate. Anyone who could shed any light on this, or describe conditions where they have seen wild eggs would be sweet!

Zach, that's an interesting question. I'll give it a shot.

I've seen lots of eggs in the wild. I remember one time finding ringneck eggs under a rock in southern Indiana. I wrote an article about it and a guy named, Minton, wrote me and told me that I had more than one clutch there...haha. I hatched those eggs too and wrote another article about the variety of patterns on the ventrals. Anyway, the eggs were laying on the ground under this rock. I would say the substrate was fairly moist, but the humidity was far less than 100%.

I've found smooth green snake eggs several times and have hatched them before. They're very easy to hatch and don't need that much humidity. I found a clutch of those underneath a garbage barrel one summer. You can imagine what is was like there. That was on almost dry ground.

I've found hognose snake eggs before too. Once I found a whole clutch of about 20+ inside a rotting stump. It was somewhat moist in there, but not that humid. Maybe I need to start taking some humidity data for these finds. In Ohio I found a gravid E. hognose and when she dropped a bunch of eggs I put them in a gallon jar with some damp sphagnum/sand combination and left them on the back porch until they all hatched about a month, or so, later (don't let the sun hit them).

I've hatched E. milksnake eggs too, and blue racers, fox snakes, etc, and none needed more than about 60-70% humidity (not an exact measurement). I've found milksnake eggs in the wild too, inside a rotten log. Along with the wild finds, I've hatched hundreds of eggs in captivity too. Mostly I've worked with Asian ratsnakes which come from a very humid environment most of the time, but I don't think their requirements are much different from our snakes here either. In other words, I don't think colubrid eggs generally need 100% humidity. They don't need a very dry or very moist substrate either. I think we make our substrates too moist and worry about the humidity too much.

Colubrid eggs are very resilient. It's hard to kill them. It's to the point that I think I could just put them in a tub and leave them on a shelf in my herp room with no additional heat. Basically what I do is put some vermiculite in a tub, moist, but not dripping wet (less than 1/1). I put the eggs on top, or with a slight indentation in the vermic. I put some holes in the top of the container and put the tub in an aquarium and let it float. I usually get 100% hatch. Actually, I don't think you even need the aquarium. I've run out of aquarium space before and just put the tub on a shelf and they still hatch...LOL.

Good luck TC

PS: Here's the tub I used last summer...

The clutch of Calhoun county specks I found this summer was under a stove on dirt. Dry ground but next to a ditch containing water. It is naturally humid down my ways, but the plants and water in this area help keep it Florida-like, steamy! 9 eggs total, 5 eaten by inverts, 4 keepers hatched by J. Lassiter in his popcorn machine on vermiculite. 2.2 beautiful specks! Had rough greens lay in the dirt in a terrarium and didn't know till hatchlings were seen. Easiest eggs of all to hatch!
Todd Hughes

.....when you say "It's to the point that I think I could just put them in a tub and leave them on a shelf in my herp room with no additional heat", I can definitely relate..
I've had eggs I thought were bad and removed them from the clutch of good ones, put them in a deli cup to toss out later and forgot about them...
Well, you guessed. Some have hatched. (obviously the real bad eggs did not)After completely ignoring for 50 days.
No media, no extra humidity, nothing. Of course, you'd have to say that here in FL. the mean humidity is over 50% most of the time.
Here's a pic I took last year of one mexicana from 2 "bad" eggs the year before!

I've found eggs in what I considered very dry and hot conditions and returned later to find they had hatched (s. black racer)
Also found corn and rat snake eggs in rotted palm trunks. Much more damp and cool.
Just depends on what's available to the snake and maybe an innate sense of the weather in the coming weeks.
:Mark

:Mark
-----
Surrender Dorothy!

www.crimsonking.funtigo.com

Interesting. I guess they're where you find them and they're almost as hardy as the snakes themselves. But think about all the ones we don't find. I've often wondered where the eggs are that we never see. I think a lot of snakes lay their eggs just below the surface of the earth, like in tunnels, etc. I've seen a lot of turtle eggs. We have four species that lay on our property here at Afton Farm. They usually dig shallow holes, drop the eggs in, and cover them with the same dirt. Not terribly humid I would think, yet they hatch. Michigan is not nearly as humid as FL, or even, e. TX. My herp room usually doesn't get over 60% even in the summer. That's why I've worried about them through the years, but not as much as my hunting partner, who has an incubator for his.

Mainly what floating them in the aquarium does is keep the heat steady at 80-82*F, most of the time. But the room often drops to 76-78*F at night. I think colubrid eggs could handle that, ok. I might try using just room temps in the future

TC

It seems to me that eggs in the wild are found in much dryer places then I thought. I have never tried low humidity before but I think I am going to try and incubate some eggs on some barely moistened vermiculite. Has anyone ever experimented with different humidities?

>>It seems to me that eggs in the wild are found in much dryer places then I thought. I have never tried low humidity before but I think I am going to try and incubate some eggs on some barely moistened vermiculite. Has anyone ever experimented with different humidities?

Yes. I didn't mean to imply you could go with dry vermiculite though. What I did was put vermic in a container about half full, then start adding water, but not 1:1. Instead I'd do less than that, then see how it moistened the vermic. I found I could keep the top of the vermic pretty dry and still have good humidity, and that's with some ventilation holes too. Also, you can watch your eggs to see how they're doing. If they start to dent up, then you could add a little water to increase the humidity.

In summary, I think some folks make their medium too wet. In the past I've had a little trouble with molding, etc. This new way has worked better for me. Of course, I don't mass produce anything. I usually only have 2 or 3 clutches a year to hatch out. I think this year I might do that with the vermic and just put a clutch on a shelf in my Herp Room to see if they'll hatch. My Herp Room temps, usually 78-82*F. should be sufficient to hatch colubrid eggs. It might take slightly longer, however.

Good luck....TC