I have seen many people successfully let their females maternally incubate with great results and a high occurance of twins. It is up to you and the condition of your female. If you have a BIG healthy and well fed female then she should be fine to maternally incubate.
My choice is using an incubator as it is less stress on the female.
Is there any difference or risk leaving your snakes to naturally nurture their clutch or is it always a better idea to separate snd incubate the clutch yourself?
What are the risks and differences?
Hey KingSirloin,
I'm quite interested in what hasn't worked as much as what has. I'm curious what you tried when letting the female incubate. If you have the time, any details would be great, especially what species you were trying this with and what set up you were using.
I'm quite sure I will get a lower hatch rate than when using 100% artificial techniques, but this doesn't bother me in the slightest. I do want to make sure however, that this can be attempted with some measure of success, to see the full process from brumation to healthy hatchlings, without detrimental affects on any of the individuals involved. I'm also not interested in seeing a healthy female waste two months incubating eggs that never had a chance. For this reason, I'd love to hear more experiences, before embarking upon something that is potentially a dumb idea!
Cheers.
Scott.
Get the book "The complete carpet python" if your interested on maternal incubation, there is a lot of info about it. Plus the whole book is excellent.
Hi Scott. My first attempt at breeding 'anything' was last year with a pair of bredli's. As it was my first, and her first clutch, I thought I would let her incubate them maternally. She produced quite a large healthy looking clutch, but unless the conditions in the enclosure replicate exactly what the incubator does, there'll no doubt be a failure rate. Mine was 100%.
Sure she will coil around them and attempt to warm them, but she can't control the humidity OR air circulation. This still has to be controlled in the enclosure where she lays, almost like turning the enclosure into an incubator. All eggs eventually went mouldy or dried up, even though I had a heat mat and water tray in there to assist.
12 months later I tried again, this time with an incubator. Out of the first female clutch of 16 eggs, I got 13 hatchlings, and the second clutch of 19 eggs produced 17 hatchlings. One went mouldy because it was right at the bottom and didn't get much circulation, the other hatchy died in its egg. I just transferred the clump of eggs from the enclosure to the incubator. They were stuck together when laid and I didn't want to risk tearing the skin separating them. I'm sure in nature they don't get laid in perfect even rows.
I used a Reptapet Incubator I bought on ebay several years earlier. It was set to 31.5 degrees with the fan running continuously and humidity above 90%. Incidentally, the adult female is for sale as I also have another.
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