Female ball pythons will refuse food for the entire 2 month incubation time. This is not because she is sick or unhealthy. Eating Behavior While Incubating and Broodingĭuring brooding, and often well before she starts laying eggs, your female will not eat. She likely picked the spot with a nice temperature and moisture profile.
#HOMEMADE INCUBATOR FOR BALL PYTHON EGGS PROFESSIONAL#
Since an accurate and professional incubation setup is quite expensive, it is usually recommended that the eggs be left with the female, exactly where she laid them. The chamber stays at 86°-90° F, which keeps the eggs at just the right temperature. These chambers typically use a moist substrate, such as perlite, to embed the eggs. Some breeders choose to remove the eggs and incubate them separate from the female in a reptile-egg incubation chamber. Depending on how tightly she squeezes the clutch, she can let the water pass or hold it near the eggs as it soaks in. The moisture will collect on her scales, and drip off onto the eggs. Desiccationĭesiccation can be a serious cause of mortality in eggs and young snakes, so make sure that the humidity stays high in the cage. Her body will also direct moisture to the egg clutch, keeping the leathery shells of the eggs nice and moist. Her tightly coiled body has been found to keep the eggs at almost precisely 86° Fahrenheit, and keeps the eggs moist for the 2 month incubation time. The female may be defensive of her eggs at this point, so be careful when you are reaching into the habitat. This brooding serves 2 purposes: protection and hydration. The process of incubation in ball pythons is called ‘brooding’ because the female forms a tight coil around her eggs. With around 10 eggs, you should expect around 75% of them to hatch. In extremely large clutches, many of the eggs may not hatch. So, it’s best to leave the eggs where they lie and let the female do her job.
Researchers who tried to separate egg clutches found that they could not do it without significant damage to the eggs. This adaptation likely ensures that the eggs stay in a clutch so that the female can easily coil around them to brood. Do not move the ball python eggs!īall python eggs adhere very strongly to one another. You will do more damage to the eggs trying to separate them than any benefit you will get redistributing them to other brooding females. If your female lays more or less than 5 eggs, don’t worry about it. Studies have shown that more than 5 eggs can create a disadvantage to some of the offspring, and they will be less likely to survive.
That’s okay, too! Fewer than 5 eggs can be brooded by a female with no significant problems.
But my ball python laid more or fewer than 5 eggs? So, you could expect to see around 125 eggs in a female snake’s lifetime, though she may not be ready to reproduce every year if she does not have enough fat reserves or access to a male snake. Since ball pythons live over 30 years and are usually sexually mature in 3-5 years, you can assume that your snake will lay a clutch of eggs every year for around 25 years. So, while this number may vary slightly, you should probably expect 5 eggs in most egg clutches. In fact, one study found that 95% of the female snakes laid exactly 5 eggs. While this seems like a huge range, an average of around 5 eggs is seen in most studies that focus on ball pythons. How many eggs should I expect?Īnywhere from 3-14 eggs should be expected, per gravid female. This article covers everything you need to know about ball python eggs, from conception to hatched baby snakes, and how many eggs you should expect when breeding ball pythons.
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