there's a few different methods for incubation.
I always take the eggs for artificial incubation as my set ups aren't suitable to allow for maternal incubation (leaving the eggs with mum)
by taking the eggs its less stress on the mum, having a clutch of eggs can uses up to 1/3 of her body mass. on top of that they tend not to eat whilst there coiled around there clutch, that's a whole 50 days with out eating.
after I take the eggs away I clean the enclosure really well so there is no smell left and start feeding the female again. its important to get good body condition back on them after undergoing such dramatic weight loss.
now with in artificial incubation there are a few different ways you can go about it. and different breeders have different methods that they favour.
for me its "suspended over medium" the eggs are placed on a grid in a special container above the incubation medium , this year I am using water saving crystals, but there are others,
last year I had just water on its own in the bottom of the tubs.
and the year before that I tried pearlite and vermiculite.
more traditional methods of incubation involve putting the eggs straight in the vermiculite or pearlite.
im not a fan of doing that tho. as if you don't get the water ratio right you can have problems.
too much water and you drown the eggs, to little and the medium sucks moister out of the eggs and they dehydrate.
buy having them suspended over the medium you eliminate those risks , as well as getting better air flow for gas exchange.
my incubator its self is an old fridge with a heating element and thermostat installed. tempriture is set to 30 degrees C.
reptile eggs are quite different from bird eggs. they can't be rotated or turned. as the embryos attach them selves to the top of the yolk. if the eggs turn they drown. so its important to keep the eggs the same way up as when they were layed.
they also don't have a hard shell like bird eggs do they have a leathery shell.
at the end of the incubation period the baby snakes, start to pip there shells they may spend up to a full week still in the egg after that tho as they absorb any undigested yolk before going out in the world.
in the latter stages of incubation , the embryos can be observed moving around in the eggs when viewed under a light
here is a photo of one the clutches from last year. these were out of my Children's python
the same containers im using this year, the white gravel looking stuff is pearlite,
I don't like using it cause it scratches the containers.
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