female with eggs

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What?

how will she go back to them if they’re not there :p if you mean will she go back to where she laid, then yes unless you clean it/ remove nest box
 
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sorry I didnt make it clear enough ,what happened was she didn't lay in the nesting box I had put in but directly on the heat mat
So I removed her from the eggs & put the eggs in the nesting box When I put her back in she went into her hide & not to the nesting box
I then had to leave for work so I don't know if she will go back to the eggs after I have touched them
 
What I would do is take out all hides except for the nesting box so she has no other alternative but to go back to the eggs. (Assuming that you're maternally incubating them)
 
Hi Tony,

Generally once a maternally incubating female python is disturbed she will simply abandon the clutch. It's presumed to be a survival strategy for the snake. Naturally there are always exceptions but this seems to be the norm. You can try what Pythonguy suggests and see how it goes but personally I don't like your chances. Let's hope I'm wrong.

As a rule, unless you intend to artificially incubate a clutch the best thing to do is to leave the female and clutch be so she can just do her thing. When I did breed pythons I never removed eggs to incubate and always let the female do the job and never had a clutch fail. Never used a nesting box either.

In hindsight you probably would have been better off placing the nesting box over or just off centre of the heat mat or just left the clutch where she laid it and turned the heat mat off.

Best of luck with the clutch. Keep us posted as I'm interested to know what she does.

Cheers,

George.
 
Hi Tony,

Generally once a maternally incubating female python is disturbed she will simply abandon the clutch. It's presumed to be a survival strategy for the snake. Naturally there are always exceptions but this seems to be the norm. You can try what Pythonguy suggests and see how it goes but personally I don't like your chances. Let's hope I'm wrong.

As a rule, unless you intend to artificially incubate a clutch the best thing to do is to leave the female and clutch be so she can just do her thing. When I did breed pythons I never removed eggs to incubate and always let the female do the job and never had a clutch fail. Never used a nesting box either.

In hindsight you probably would have been better off placing the nesting box over or just off centre of the heat mat or just left the clutch where she laid it and turned the heat mat off.

Best of luck with the clutch. Keep us posted as I'm interested to know what she does.

Cheers,

George.
Curious if she did lay them on top/beneath of the heating, would this not kill the eggs quickly?
 
Curious if she did lay them on top/beneath of the heating, would this not kill the eggs quickly?
Thats what my concern was & the reason I moved them I thought there would be to much direct heat & that it would also dry the eggs out
She has not gone back to them yet so I have the clutch in the nesting box & have adjusted temperatures to maintain constant incubating temps & will just keep my fingers crossed
 
Thats what my concern was & the reason I moved them I thought there would be to much direct heat & that it would also dry the eggs out
She has not gone back to them yet so I have the clutch in the nesting box & have adjusted temperatures to maintain constant incubating temps & will just keep my fingers crossed
Better off making a incubator mate, will be about 100$, esky + heatcord + thermostat
 
Curious if she did lay them on top/beneath of the heating, would this not kill the eggs quickly?

Thats what my concern was & the reason I moved them I thought there would be to much direct heat & that it would also dry the eggs out
She has not gone back to them yet so I have the clutch in the nesting box & have adjusted temperatures to maintain constant incubating temps & will just keep my fingers crossed
Hi Guys,

No not necessarily. Provided she had access to water so she could regulate the humidity of the eggs. This way provided the heat mat was connected to a thermostat there shouldn't have been a problem. She would control the moisture/humidity of the eggs by either soaking in the water and transferring water to the eggs and/or drinking water and then urinating directly on them. She knows what she's doing and how to give the eggs the best chance of survival to the point of hatching and that is why she laid them over the heat mat rather than in the nest box. I should have made it clear that when I said to turn off the heat mat I meant at night.

I really don't know where this idea of providing snakes with nesting boxes came from and from personal experience don't see the purpose of them. Like I said I've never used them and had plenty of success without them.

When I used to breed them I simply placed heavily gravid females into 6 ply, 60cm long x 50cm high x 50cm wide wooden enclosures with an small glass window in the lid. I used artificial grass as a substrate and a 40 watt incandescent bulb for heating along with a water dish just big enough for the female to fit in and another smaller one for fresh water. I didn't even have the heat sourse connected to a thermostat but used a timer to provide heat for a couple of hours in the mornings then have it timed to go off during the warmer part of the day before coming back on late afternoon and turn off at night.

I've also found that hatchlings produced from maternal incubation always appear to be healthier and more robust than those hatched using artificial incubation and of the personal belief that artificial incubation seems to be more for the convenience of the breeder rather than for the benefit of the young snakes.

Just as a footnote:-

Where I live I'm often called to homes that have discovered female Carpets incubating eggs deep inside compost bins/bays/heaps where the temperatures are quite often consistently much higher than those used by keepers who artificially incubate. From personal observations it appears that that the female digs a depression in or near the top of the compost and deposit the eggs directly into the depression and regulates the incubating temperature by intermittently wrapping herself around eggs for periods of time or using the compost to lightly cover them. The only real constant seems to be the humidity. I've even discovered as many as three females using the same method in the same compost heap.

In other situations where I've discovered female Carpets/Diamonds maternally incubating eggs in the wild they have almost always been in situations where they are close to a water sourse and other than being set amongst patches of grass or similar vegetation are pretty much in the open where they are exposed to the elements and direct sunlight.
 
Thanks for that , I was attempting to let her incubate herself but panicked when I saw she had laid on the heat mat
I will try your way next time as I'm of the opinion that if it has been working perfectly in nature why change it
 

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