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Bad Eggs??? :(

joseydiann

joseydiann

S&S Dragons
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Ok so as some of you already know I ended up with 5 eggs form the 100% het albino female that I got from Dustin.

Well this is my first time with snake eggs and I don't understand what is going on or what I am doing wrong but the eggs do not look good.

They were all pretty white and plump when I first put them in the inc. NOW they look just terrible..

One is totally purple/redish and all sunk in and a few of the others are the same just not purple. So can someone tell me what is going on and if you think they will hatch..

One of them even has think green mold on it..

Temp stays 89-90 and the humidity stays around 90%-95% I have clear plastic wrap on the tub under the lid like I was told. :shrug01:


I seen veins in them like 3 days ago..

2 eggs look good, but the other 3 well :(

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Amanda
 
Personally, I would leave them alone. Continue to care for them as if they are all viable and just wait. You never know.

I know these are snake eggs, but I had 4 dragon eggs I thought were surely goners - they went over 100 days - all their siblings had hatched weeks before and the remaining 4 didn't look very good at all. Much to my total shock they did hatch and thrive.
 
Yeah I've also had dragon and leo eggs go forever, but in my many years of breeding different reptiles I've never had eggs do this. And I'm just crushed that I might lose my first ever snake eggs. I don't understand what happen or why..

Amanda
 
Ok but then how do you keep the humidity 90% I thought it was too wet too so I let it dry out some and just put the wet paper towels next to them but the Verm. is still good and damp..
 
Yeah, that's the problem with ball pythons. You want the humidity high, but you don't want the substrate to be soaking wet or the eggs will mold. What kind of substrate is that?
 
joseydiann said:
Ok but then how do you keep the humidity 90% I thought it was too wet too so I let it dry out some and just put the wet paper towels next to them but the Verm. is still good and damp..
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Without a good quality Hygrometer you could be getting a false low reading. The vermiculite shouldn't pack and should crumble apart easily. I would set them up in a new container that isn't so wet. Hope this helps. :thumbsup:
 
serpentsden said:
Without a good quality Hygrometer you could be getting a false low reading. The vermiculite shouldn't pack and should crumble apart easily. I would set them up in a new container that isn't so wet. Hope this helps. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

:iagree: with serpentsden. The vermiculite should def. crumble. I'd rather mine be not wet enough rather than too wet. When mine start to dimple the least little bit, I just dampen and wring out a paper towel and place it over the eggs. They plump back up in no time. This has always worked for me. Good luck with them!
 
Paid $50 for the Hygrometer..
I just made a new tub full of vermiculite and transferred the eggs over to a dryer place.

I put a tiny bowl of water next to the eggs, will that help that way I don't have to flood the vermiculite?

It now says 64% humidity, so I need to lay a wet paper towel over the eggs when they look to dry? And put news paper over them if they look to wet?

Why is it not this hard with dragon and leo eggs or even turtle & tort eggs lol?!
Heck, I have 67 VC eggs in the incubate and they have done great for 7 months.
 
joseydiann said:
Paid $50 for the Hygrometer..
I just made a new tub full of vermiculite and transferred the eggs over to a dryer place.

I put a tiny bowl of water next to the eggs, will that help that way I don't have to flood the vermiculite?

It now says 64% humidity, so I need to lay a wet paper towel over the eggs when they look to dry? And put news paper over them if they look to wet?

Why is it not this hard with dragon and leo eggs or even turtle & tort eggs lol?!
Heck, I have 67 VC eggs in the incubate and they have done great for 7 months.
Click to expand...


Placing a tiny bowl of water will help raise the relative humidity. If the container is closed and has no air holes you should be ok. Personally I don't like putting anything wet on the eggs!

What kind of hygrometer are you using?
 
Humm I don't know, I'll have to go look! It has 2 cords on it, tells the temps and humidity, with the date and time ect.. even has and alarm on it lol and a few other things. I just got it like 2 months ago from Petmountian.com..

So is 64% humidity ok??

It is closed up tight, no holes..

Amanda
 
Oh and not the right forum but while I was getting help here with those eggs and making a new tub for them, I found these lol.. What a night, and then the past 3 nights I've been outside watching Boxies lay their eggs and getting them into the incubator haha..

Anyway tiny little sunkissed baby corns are on the way now, 11 of them..

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So when you mix up the vermiculite, slowly add water until it clumps together when squeezed, but no water drips out when you're squeezing. It should hold together until you poke it or move it a little, and then it should fall apart easily.

If you use that vermiculite and cover the container with plastic, you should be fine, humidity-wise. You don't even need to measure it, really. Just keep an eye on the eggs, and if they start to dimple more than two weeks before hatching, then add a little water to the vermiculite (don't add too much too quickly). It's okay for them to be too dry than too wet.

Mine got too dry after only a couple weeks in the incubator (I didn't use plastic, though I should have), so I mixed up some slightly-more-damp vermiculite and moved them to the new container. They never completely plumped back up, but they must've been doing fine 'cause they're hatching right now.
 
joseydiann said:
Humm I don't know, I'll have to go look! It has 2 cords on it, tells the temps and humidity, with the date and time ect.. even has and alarm on it lol and a few other things. I just got it like 2 months ago from Petmountian.com..

So is 64% humidity ok??

It is closed up tight, no holes..

Amanda
Click to expand...



Though you may have paid $50.00 for that temp/humidity/clock etc it's not a precision instrument especially in the hydrometer readings. I would bet your reading was 100%.

If you want a precision hydrometer I use a Forma Scientific 4" dial hydrometer and it's extremely accurate but not cheap. Here is their contact info if you wish to contact them for a price quote.
http://www.macraesbluebook.com/search/company.cfm?company=313109

Best of luck!!
 
I want to make it clear that I don't soak the paper towel when I place it over the eggs (and I only use this if the eggs are dimpling). It has hardly any water in it. Just helps hold in the moisture. I also use a lil cup of water in the middle of my incubator and have never tried the plastic wrap trick. But then again I've never needed to do anything different other than re dampen the vermiculite or use the dampened paper towel.

Also for the mold, I've read that you can use a solution of listerine and water and take a Q-tip to GENTLY wipe off the mold. I've also done this and it works great.
 
A good way to get around the problem of a wet substrate is to use something like plastic lighting diffusion panel (aka. egg crate) to keep the eggs off the substrate. Here is how I set my BP eggs up.... no need to worry about the substrate being too damp.
 

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I am Old school and still use a 10 gallon and let my container float with a dry basket and the Humidty gets the eggs perfect Moisture from the Half full tank .I have a couple air holes up high on my basket wich lets moist air in without me having to Guess how much is needed!
 
i use the light disfusser pieces too I just got my second clutch for this year lol.. I found with my first bp cltuch I had the medium too wet as well 2 years ago roughly.
 
It kinda looked like maybe you didnt clean all the moisture off the lid regularly and it dripped right down on the eggs from the top?
 
the way to mix vermiculite if you use 250 grams of vermiculite use 250grams of water always mixes up perfect 1 to 1 ratio and get rid of the paper towel that will promote mold to grow. what are you using for a incubator?
 
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