# incubation temperature/humidity



## snickers (Aug 15, 2007)

I've seen people on here discuss heatedly about incubators, and exactly how an incubator should be set up, what the temperatures and humidity should be, and lots more. I've also noticed that lots of people claim that their way of setting up an incubator resulted in 100% success rate.

It occurs to me that we might all be being a bit anal about setting up incubators. In nature the conditions are probably quite variable and so eggs are probably quite a bit more robust than we give them credit for. It seems to me that eggs need three things
- temperature in the right range, but some variation doesn't harm
- high humidity, but no condensation
- reasonably sterile substrate
Any incubator design that satisfies these requirements seems to work fine.

I've only dealt with snake eggs, but I've used 2 or 3 different incubators. They all worked really well. The main problem I had was with humidity. temperature and infection was never a problem.

what are your views?


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## cjsnakes (Feb 15, 2009)

do you know what i have to agree with this there are a few differnt ways people have to incubation,

the first time i bred my female (was her first clutch aswell) personally i had a prob keeping humidity high enough with out condensation every now and again but was soon sorted and all eggs hatched and where really strong 
I think it is good to vary a bit from week to week to keep them robust just as they would natrually


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## jools (Apr 4, 2009)

I think it depends what species you are incubating. Some are so robust that you would probably succeed incubating in a tin can in the garden lol. Others are more delicate with more specific requirements. Also if you are incubating for a certain sex then temps can be critical.


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## HadesDragons (Jun 30, 2007)

As above - some species have highly specific temperature ranges in the wild, so for incubating them you'd need something pretty specific, as you would if you're going for a specific sex (for those species with TDSD).

For many species though you'll get a good hatch rate under a variety of conditions : victory:


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## paulh (Sep 19, 2007)

snickers said:


> It seems to me that eggs need three things
> - temperature in the right range, but some variation doesn't harm
> - high humidity, but no condensation
> - reasonably sterile substrate
> Any incubator design that satisfies these requirements seems to work fine.


I think there is a fourth thing -- adequate oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange.

IMO, temperature variation is a good thing for the North American colubrid snakes I've incubated (bullsnakes, fox snakes, milk snakes, eastern hognose snake, corn snakes). They get up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and drop into the low to mid 70s at night. The embryos develop rapidly at the high temperature but build up an oxygen debt. At night, when it is cooler, they develop slowly but can get rid of the excess carbon dioxide. With a constant temperature, development speed has to be balanced with oxygen supply for optimum development. This has resulted in 100% hatches for me.


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