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I was wondering what should I do when she lays her eggs. Should I let her incubat them or Should I put them in a incubater? I just thought I would get every ones idea. ANd if any one that has breed burms before could give me an idea what to do. She just had her ovulation shed on the 19th. Any ideas would be great.

thank you Joe
0.1 black lab
0.1 albino burmese
1.0 burmese
1.0 ball python
0.5 ball pythons
0.1 pastel ball python
1.1 sugar gliders

Most people who breed pythons of any species generally go with artificial incubation. I bred burmese several dozen times from the early 80's to early 90's and went with maternal incubation every time except once and never had any problems. Used it with normals and later albinos. It provides a fascinating look at natural reproductive behavior. With thermoregulating brooding species like burmese, I really don't think it is any riskier than artificial incubation if you get them setup correctly. Two things that you must do for maternal incubation with burmese is keep the cage humidity above 85% at all times and maintain the cage temperature around the nest box in the high 80's at all times. If you don't keep the humidity up, you risk desiccating the eggs and if the temperature drops too low, the female will expend an inordinate amount of energy keeping the egg mass at the proper incubating temperature of 92 F. One way to gauge the cage temp. visually is to watch the incubating females rate of contractions. If they are less than 5 per minute, the cage temp. is probably too high; if much greater than about 10 per minute, the cage temp. is probably too low. Don't let the cage temp. get too high as she can always raise the egg mass temp., but there is no way for her to lower it. All of the clutches I had hatched from 55 to 57 days, with the vast majority hatching on day 56. The only drawback that bothers some breeders is that the female comes off the eggs at hatching with a significant loss of body weight. This essentially prohibits her from being bred the following season and so maternally incubating pythons typically are best bred only every other year. I personally never had a problem with that. I attached a photo below taken in 1981 of one of the first females I bred. She was 12 to 13 feet and this was her first clutch. She maternally incubated 34 eggs with 33 hatching. Good luck with whatever method you choose.

Kelly