Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well i have wood turtle eggs in the incubator and have had them set at approx. 83.5 degrees now for about 2 weeks. I came home from work today and found the incubator temp at 93 DEGREES !!!! Now it could only have been that for a short period of time cause i check on it every morning before work and when i come home so it must have had a short circiut or something while i was at work today I have them in another incubator now at the original 83.5 can anyone tell me if this will kill them?? I have cooked snapping turtle eggs before cause the probe fell out of the incubator when i closed it and the temp shot up over 100!! The wood eggs still look fine all nice and pink but i still maybe need to be reassured they are ok....(or not) anyone experience this before???? thanks

mike

I have experienced this before with emydid eggs. I shut the door to the room in which my incubator stays, and left it closed all day accidentally. I have mercury vapor lights in there, and the room also gets sun exposure for most of the day. The room temperature rose above the incubator temperature (over 90). It was a very short period of time, and I had roughly the same hatch rates as previous years. Don't give up hope! I've heard of horror stories before, and it seems that the eggs will start to mold within just a few days. I hope it all works out for you.

I agree with Ken, I wouldn't worry about the temp getting to 93 degrees for a short while. Turtle eggs in the wild naturally experience a wide degree of fluctuations in temperature, including extremes. I have had eggs get to over 100 degrees F before because of a like situation and had all hatch out unaffected. Only one part of your story does concern me though. After two weeks of incubation, you referred to your eggs as being pink. In most (but not all) cases, the shell surface area exposed to gas exchange should have turned to a chalky-white coloration by this point. In viable eggs you will normally notice a white spot begins to form at the northern-most (or thereabouts) point of the egg within a couple days of laying. This is due to the young blastocyst attaching itself to the egg wall (this is why you don't rotate reptile eggs) and beginning the natural gas exchange and absorbtion of calcium from the egg wall. Like Ken said, I would hold out for awhile though. I have had bad eggs mold shortly after beginning incubation, but also go the whole incubation duration without attracting any mold. (The yolks of these had become sludgy inside upon opening.) Good luck. Let us know what happens!

Sidenote- If anyone has hatched out eggs that never attained the chalky-white coloration of a "normal" viable egg, please post, I would be interested to hear!

-JG

Ok good....well it wasn't quite 2 weeks it was more like 1 1/2 weeks. They still look really well and turned chalky white. I've hatchd woods before so i know what to look for i just never had a spike in temp like that and had them live. But all looks good and hopefully in about 25-30 days i should have little ones. I will post pics. thanks alot

mike

Sounds good!