Rick,

Temps in the mid-80's for a few hours will not cause a problem, however a few days at these temps probably would. Your temp of 91 is actually perfect for artificial incubation of burmese eggs, provided your thermometers are accurate. With maternal incubation, averaging 92 F, burmese eggs will almost always hatch at 56 days, and occasionally 57.



When it comes to manually pipping eggs, I am even more out there than HH. I never manually pip any eggs. I figure that if that animal can't remove itself from the egg as it has evolved to do so over millions of years, then it wasn't meant to make it. This may seem harsh, but is obviously a personal choice for everyone. There is absolutely nothing wrong with manually pipping the eggs and I have no issue with the practice, it's just that I chose not to. I use maternal incubation 95% of the time, and have done so since the late 1970's. However, one way that I do interfere, is that I remove the female from the egg mass as soon as the first egg is slit by one of the hatchlings. I always cut open every unhatched egg in a clutch, and don't ever remember losing a neonate to what I thought was due to the inability of that hatchling to pip the egg shell on it's own. Additionally, it was extremely rare to find an egg that didn't hatch with even a close to full term neonate. And remember that this is with a large pile of eggs stacked several layers deep. Good luck with your eggs, and I would be very interested to see your incubator design.



Kelly

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