Question about green eggs

I've got a clutch of eggs in the incubator, good veins, showing all signs of progressing normally....until I candled them again about 7-10 days ago. One of them lit up GREEN. I left it, figuring it would crap out and collapse; but it didn't. I rechecked today, and another one was starting to show a greenish hue (but nothing like the first).
Since today was day 65 - incubated at 88.4 degrees - I cut them to see what was going on. When I cut the one that lit up green, big surprise, green fluid oozed out. Even bigger surprise, the baby is alive and seems okay - from what I can tell from the cut I made...meaning he moves when touched - but his color is darker than it should be.

What's with the green?? Any serious explanations would be appreciated.

These BP eggs? That sounds weird as heck, you didn't happen to take pics, did you? I've never seen or heard anything like that.




My first impulse was to say 'They're good with ham', but you asked for 'serious' explanations.

No, not BP eggs.
No pics, it was a spur of the moment decision while I was waiting to leave for work...thought about pics after the fact.

I've seen this happen with leopard gecko eggs. In most cases, the embryos are alive but undeveloped and don't survive to hatching. In leopard geckos though, the embryos are paler than normal, not darker. Perhaps it's some sort of fungus? With any luck the pythons will make it, but I'm not sure they will.

I hear they are good with ham.....

Did they have any odor?

Originally Posted by garweft

I hear they are good with ham.....

Someone forgot to read their Dr.Suess

No discernible odor (I took them outside, because I was expecting it).
The baby from the egg that candled green appeared fully developed. I actually expected to find that one dead; but it twitched and squirmed when I poked at it.

They may be slow starters then. I'm pretty sure the green is from a rotting yolk sac, and the animals that survive don't have that extra week of food to hold them over. I don't think they absorb the yolk in this case, I think it just sloughs off. My theory kind of matches with your extended incubation time too. Perhaps timing is everything, and the rotting didn't occur until late in development and so the hatchlings might live. I hope they make it for you!

A series of cultures might have been about the only way to figure that one out. I've never heard or seen anything like that before. Well at least in a reptile egg, in humans if a womans water breaks and it is green it a sign of meconium, a babies first poo.

I'm not sure how possible it is that your snake pooped in it's egg though.

The one in the green egg was looking out at me when I opened the box to look at him. The first pic isn't the best, but you can see the green fluid around the cut, at the base of the egg where it leaked down, and inside the egg.
The second shot is a better look at the little explorer.

*not sure that was the greener of the two eggs, as this snake looks more normal colored than what I saw last night....but I think, based on position, that it is. I was set on not disturbing things any more than necessary because I've got another clutch in that same box