In order to successfully breed egg laying species of reptiles in human care, aside from all the other specifics, we must know how to care for the eggs should we be so fortunate to get that far. As first-time breeders we are taught the methods to success for artificial incubation; removing the eggs from the mother after deposition and placing them inside an egg box within a temperature-controlled incubator. Most breeders implement artificial incubation for 100% of their produced offspring with high rates of success. What many breeders and hobbyists don’t do is Maternal Incubation; allowing the female to retain control of her eggs and take them to hatching successfully.
Maternal incubation places all control of the eggs in the “hands” of the female snake in question. As the keeper we have little control of what is happening to the eggs. What we do have control of, however, is the climate provided for the snake inside the enclosure. If we have this dialed in for the species, hypothetically the female should be able to see those eggs to hatching day if they were successfully fertilized. The hypothesis is that these animals have evolved and survived successfully this far due to their ability to reproduce in the wild. If we are providing them an environment that is as close to what they need as possible, then they should be able to replicate the reproductive process of their wild counterparts. Although there is relatively little we as keepers can do for the eggs once they are laid, we can at least provide an optimal environment to ensure the eggs have the greatest chance of survival. The idea is that once the eggs are laid, we do nothing. Nothing.
In the 2018/2019 breeding season I decided that I was going to allow my larger female Jungle Carpet Python “Azteca” maternally incubate her clutch. She was bred to a male Striped Jungle Carpet Python “Rorschach” and they successfully produced a large clutch of eggs. I had thermometer probes in the enclosure as well as the nest box that I provided for Azteca. Fortunately, she utilized her lay box instantly and I was able to monitor what the environmental conditions were like around her and the eggs to get some insight. Once she laid her eggs, I checked that she had a good hold on her “beehive” of eggs within her nest box of lightly misted sphagnum moss. Once she was in, she was left alone other than for weekly checks on her and the eggs to ensure nothing visibly wrong was occurring with any eggs, such as mold. After 59 days of waiting I noticed a large spike in the nest box temps and sure enough, little baby Jungle Carpet Pythons had begun slicing their way out of their eggs underneath the watchful and protective eye of Azteca. After 24 hours I removed the mother from her eggs to get her cleaned up and ensure the babies didn’t find their way out of the vents and gaps in the enclosure. Once things were all cleaned up and rearranged, babies began to emerge and get set up in their individual enclosures and were weighed and photographed for identification and study purposes.
I decided to go to this level of monitoring the incubation process and measuring offspring because I wanted to see what was going on to ultimately help study a larger hypothesis. My hypothesis is based off a lot of discussion among other breeders and keepers more experienced than myself about how maternally incubated babies tend to come out larger, more robust, and better feeders. In my first of many future planned attempts at maternal incubation, there were 18 eggs, 16 of which made it full term. The two that were dead inside their eggs were at the bottom of the pile and may not have had the full oxygen transfer needed to make it all the way. There was very little surface area exposed for those babies and ultimately, they perished. The 16 remaining baby Jungles all weighed much more than any baby carpet pythons I had produced prior (which is not many, but a sample size of roughly 75-80). Aside from one outlier at 24 grams, the average weight among the babies was 28 grams. Some of them were massively well fed from the provided yolk inside their eggs and emerged with huge full bellies from nourishment. These babies were massive. Three and a half weeks after they had their postnatal shed, 15 out of 16 babies drop fed upon frozen thawed fuzzy mice left in the enclosure overnight. The one holdout waited three weeks before getting with the program. In one month’s time after first offering every baby had eaten two to five meals. It took several more weeks to get the babies to eat from tongs because they were so shy and hadn’t quite worked up the bravery to strike at dangling food. These are the gentlest giant baby Jungle Carpet Pythons I had ever experienced. To this day not one has ever struck or bitten me. I intend on doing more maternally incubated clutches every year if possible, to continue to add to my study sample size, but for a first attempt these were very encouraging results.
Now why don’t more keepers implement maternal incubation? There are many justifications, and this is not a stab at other keepers for not trying this method at all. I was brought into this hobby being told that it’s doomed to fail, scary, bound to lose you babies, etc. and ultimately there was an air of fear and despair about it. Despite that, there were still a few folks who had done it here and there with some success. Everyone that I spoke with was not willing to risk their eggs trying or had heard horror stories from their friends about their attempts. Yet, there were still whispers of folks who had plenty of success doing it.
I decided to roll the dice on maternal incubation with Azteca because she was a proven breeder and a pretty hefty jungle to begin with. Her size and previous experience left me feeling confident that she had the technique and fat reserves to undergo more time away from food. I went ahead with it and it all went fine. The hard part is to not intervene. Momma knows best. Azteca moved the nest box off the direct heat into the middle of the enclosure and scooted the water bowl towards her. She did what she wanted, I left her alone, and everything went fine. You cannot helicopter mom your snakes going through maternal incubation, but you do want to keep an eye on them. Females have been known to kick out eggs or ditch entire clutches from time to time. For these reasons you want to have an incubator ready. Not all females make perfect snake moms.
My ultimate takeaway is that more keepers should try doing maternal incubation at least once in their time breeding egg laying snakes. It’s quite rewarding if you get to witness that maternal instinct kick in inside one of your animals and watch her protect her brood for months forgoing opportunities to feed. You gain a lot more insight into just how durable and intelligent these animals are. As a breeder I feel that I understand that snake a lot more than I did prior to her maternal incubation. I am excited to do it again at least once per season with other carpet pythons to learn as much as possible. It likely will have it’s less than perfect moments and outcomes here and there, but I won’t know until I try. My goal is to increase the amount of times I have done maternal incubation to get a better understanding of if it truly does produce healthier and more robust babies in the end to strengthen our animals. Regardless of the outcome, I am glad I tried it and I am having fun learning about these snakes I love so much.
