Hi Kary Ann. Our tropical climate is actually the best buffer, but water bottles help. Especially if the aircon is on inside the house. The colder your ambient is in the room you keep your incubator, the more important a buffer becomes. Opening and closing the door of the incubator can cause a big temperature drop and water bottles quickly reheat the incubator. They stay warm for much longer than the air around them.
My hypothesis is that temperature might influence gender ratios based on other reptiles. It could also influence malformations at some point as well, I would think. 🤔 I will be very interested in the results of the temperature change after your season is over. I love that water bottle idea.
Hi Laura. This is a great comment and allows me to expand a little on these factors, which I love to do! When breeding Ball Pythons here in the tropics we use 33C as the "kill zone" for sperm. If our temperatures in our snake rooms spike above 33C for even a little while during the breeding process, we start to see males firing blanks and a lot of slug eggs. This not only affects males directly during sperm production, but also females who are storing sperm for use later during ovulation. Males fire blanks and females loose their stored sperm at higher (33C) temperatures. I assume this 33C is also the "do not exceed" temperature for egg development and any spikes above this can kill developing eggs. The closer we go to this temperature limit, the more danger there is of deformity in hatchlings. Breeders in West Africa have also noted a temperature limit for incubation (done at room temperature in shaded warehouses) where a higher percentage of deformed babies occurs at higher temperatures. I recall 30C was mentioned. RepTillis Inside "Ranched" Ball Pythons in Togo ua-cam.com/video/1vZzECpNgE0/v-deo.html RepTillis Visiting the African Ball Python Exporter Kingpin EB Noah ua-cam.com/video/FDSrjk0bJfk/v-deo.html My incubation temperatures have been 88.5F or 31.4C and eggs take 60 days to hatch. My hatch rate is very high and deformities quite rare. I want to raise this a little to 89.0F or 31.7C (or perhaps as high as 89.5F or 31.9C) with the aim of reducing incubation to 55/56 days. I will still be well within the window of “do not exceed” temperature and I’m not expecting issues with deformity. I feel temperature instability, where fluctuations are too large, also impacts deformity and my incubator is rock steady at whatever temperature I set it at. I do not usually cut eggs, preferring to let them pip on their own, but I will cut eggs on day 60 if a couple have already pipped. I wanted to see if I can reduce incubation time by a few days safely. I know many people incubate faster and 55 days seems to be a good target based on what everyone else does. I think some of the variability depends on what temperature we keep our snakes at in their tubs and racks. A female ovulates about 50 days before she actually lays eggs, during which time cell division and embryo development is occurring. In fact, almost half of egg development takes place inside the female and only half inside our incubators. My snakes are kept without hot spots and tub temps are around 86F or 30C so it maybe that this early development is what controls incubation time and a slight raise in incubator temperature for the second half of incubation might make no difference at all. We shall see! This leads us on to TSD (Temperature Sex Determination) in Ball Pythons. TSD rather than genotypic sex determination is common in many reptiles (and some birds). Crocodiles, turtles and some lizards all have sex determination at least influenced by incubation temperature if not controlled exclusively by it. These animals are usually WZ chromosome animals where the female is the heterogametic sex and the male is a ZZ animal or homogametic. So, a male fertilising the eggs doesn’t determine sex. Temperature of incubation affects the production of the hormone aromatase, which breaks down the male sex hormones and changes the balance of hormonal development to the female side. Cooler temperatures produce less aromatase and therefore favours males. Published in The Embryo Project Encyclopedia embryo.asu.edu Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in Reptiles By: Moeller, Karla T. 2019 Ball Pythons are XY animals like humans and the male is the heterogametic sex. This alone suggests genotypic sex determination rather than TSD because it’s the chromosomes, not the temperature, that controls aromatase production during development. We also know that sex determination is genotypic in Ball Pythons from the banana gene sex link where a male banana will be either a male maker or a female maker depending upon whether it’s the X or the Y chromosome attached to the banana gene. If gender was TSD in Ball Pythons then the banana sex link would not happen, because the Banana sex link is, by definition, genotypic sex determination. I think however that there might be a link to temperature during meiosis in males or during sperm storage in females. Male gametes may be more sensitive to temperature, so keeping our snakes with hot spots at 30C plus might just affect the survivability of male sperm before it effects female sperm. My experience is that over many years using many different types of incubator, I have not noticed a difference in sex ratios. Individual clutches, yes. Overall no. For instance my maternal clutch was incubated at room temperature and took 72 days to hatch. 5 males and 2 females. My Savannah clutch laid the day before the maternal clutch hatched in 60 days in my incubator at much higher temperatures. 9 males and 3 females. Both male heavy unfortunately, despite very different incubation temperatures. Not statistically significant, but valid, nonetheless. In order to test TSD, our control conditions must be very strict and as many independent variables that could affect the outcome (such as hot spot temperatures during the breeding process before eggs are even laid) removed for the results. At face value there might be a link, but showing it’s a causative link is much more difficult. The science already points to genotypic sex determination in Ball Pythons, but it’s far from “that simple”.
Hi mate. I ran a smaller incubator for years with an on off type thermostat and it worked well. The PP thermostat I have now is much better and holds a temperature almost exactly. This larger incubator needed a fan. I only discovered that when I built it and tried it. The bigger you go, the more convection currents will stall out and not reach the top of the incubator and the only way to fix this is with a fan. Smaller incubators by and large don't need fans. A fan itself can be a source of heat and we don't want this to be linked to the thermostat and constantly switching off. The fan needs to be on full time. So if the fan is providing heat, it needs to be "in balance" with your incubator or it will overheat even when the heat is turned off. I had to search for a fan that ran cool!
Love it Rob, ever the scientist. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But you know me, I like to experiment so this year I’m bumping it up by half a degree”. 😂 My little incubator holds 6 clutches at a time and to date has incubated 6 clutches to hatching. It has always had them pipping on day 58. It’s great to know when they are expected to hatch and at first I wondered if I should turn it down half a degree or so to get to day 60 but then on consideration I have had in those 6 clutches 35 eggs and 34 of them have been perfect hatchlings with just 1 which was severely kinked and died in the egg but as the rest of the clutch was fine I think this must have been a genetic issue with that individual snake rather than a incubation issue. It’s great to be able to have peace of mind where your incubator is concerned.
Hi Ed. You're binge watching again, catching up. Thanks for taking time to comment. Knowing your incubator is a huge stress reducer. It also allows a little tinkering with the confidence experience brings!
Rock solid incubator there rob. As you live in the tropics i will forgive your error😂 prob in the egg box is a no no. Even in cooler climates. Just like how you mentioned the temp in my egg boxes is always higher than the incubator itself. At one point I was putting the probe in one of the egg boxs but if the clutch in that box was approaching hatch date, then the residual heat from the eggs would mean that the rest of clutches in the incubator would experience a drop and quite a considerable one and way more than i was comfortable with. In the end it was actually easier to set the prob up in the incubator and just have to aim off the wind as it were. If i set my incubator to 88 that means that inside the egg boxs its around 90, generally speaking. The individual egg boxes will inevitably start to warm up around day 35-40 but that is negligible as this occurs naturally anyway.. Evidently, A gradual increase in temperature gradient is natural for ball pythons eggs So i don’t worry about it at all.
Hi Joe. Great point about the eggs themselves generating some of their own heat in the last few weeks of incubation. My heat cables are drawing such minimal current it's hard to tell how much heating they're actually giving to the whole set-up. I'm running a very minimal power set-up and the difference between inside and outside the egg box is minimal. If the power goes out, it's no big deal. I loose maybe a degree or so. I can see how you'd get a big temperature difference in cold climates if the probe was in the egg box and the clutch was at 90F. Your thermostat would be fully off and the rest of the incubator would drop in temperature. Not really a problem I have. Condensation inside the egg boxes is an additional problem. I use a little wedge under each box to set it at an angle if I need to, so condensation on the lid runs down to the low end and doesn't drip on the eggs. Usually just not touching them works the best! Having tried just about every incubator method under the sun including the water bath with aquarium heater method, you start to think of incubators as living breathing things. Change one thing and it effects all the rest. Position of the probe, where the heat cables are, type of thermostat, incubator full of egg boxes or empty, air-conditioning on or off in the room the incubator was in......it all changes the fine tuning. Once you have run your incubator a year, you start to get to know it and how it will react to little changes. I remember when I first set it up, I used to heat gun everything - egg boxes, water bottles, top back and sides every hour or so until I got it dialed in and was confident. Now I just switch it on and forget it. Eggs are pretty hardy and my incubator is rock solid. A lot to be said for dialing it in and then just leave it. Don't mess. Don't fuss. And above all, don't chase a temperature with constant adjustment of the thermostat. Set it and let it run.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls yess there is a lot to be said for a dialled in, calibrated, tried and tested incubator vs a newly set up one. Smaller incubators are way easier too to control. Taller ones like yours need fans to deal with the dead zone & fans then also add another dimension. As you said, incubators become their own living and breathing thing, change one small thing and it has a knock on effect on everything else. I always go for a more simplistic approach with incubation. less is more with incubators and i think i would rather run multiple small, simple incubators than run one big complicated one, luckily for me i can house all my project with just one small simple incubator. One thing is for sure, a pulse-thermostat is a absolute must! Even though in my first incubator was managed by a on/off and it was successful incubator. Pulse stats are by far superior, to a point i would now regard them as the bare minimum for a new incubator build standard.
Very clever to use water bottles as a temperature buffer!
Hi Kary Ann. Our tropical climate is actually the best buffer, but water bottles help. Especially if the aircon is on inside the house. The colder your ambient is in the room you keep your incubator, the more important a buffer becomes. Opening and closing the door of the incubator can cause a big temperature drop and water bottles quickly reheat the incubator. They stay warm for much longer than the air around them.
I loved the build video and saved it for my own build.
Can't wait for the eggs
Me neither mate! All systems go all over again.
My hypothesis is that temperature might influence gender ratios based on other reptiles. It could also influence malformations at some point as well, I would think. 🤔 I will be very interested in the results of the temperature change after your season is over.
I love that water bottle idea.
Hi Laura. This is a great comment and allows me to expand a little on these factors, which I love to do!
When breeding Ball Pythons here in the tropics we use 33C as the "kill zone" for sperm. If our temperatures in our snake rooms spike above 33C for even a little while during the breeding process, we start to see males firing blanks and a lot of slug eggs. This not only affects males directly during sperm production, but also females who are storing sperm for use later during ovulation. Males fire blanks and females loose their stored sperm at higher (33C) temperatures.
I assume this 33C is also the "do not exceed" temperature for egg development and any spikes above this can kill developing eggs. The closer we go to this temperature limit, the more danger there is of deformity in hatchlings. Breeders in West Africa have also noted a temperature limit for incubation (done at room temperature in shaded warehouses) where a higher percentage of deformed babies occurs at higher temperatures. I recall 30C was mentioned.
RepTillis
Inside "Ranched" Ball Pythons in Togo
ua-cam.com/video/1vZzECpNgE0/v-deo.html
RepTillis
Visiting the African Ball Python Exporter Kingpin EB Noah
ua-cam.com/video/FDSrjk0bJfk/v-deo.html
My incubation temperatures have been 88.5F or 31.4C and eggs take 60 days to hatch. My hatch rate is very high and deformities quite rare. I want to raise this a little to 89.0F or 31.7C (or perhaps as high as 89.5F or 31.9C) with the aim of reducing incubation to 55/56 days. I will still be well within the window of “do not exceed” temperature and I’m not expecting issues with deformity. I feel temperature instability, where fluctuations are too large, also impacts deformity and my incubator is rock steady at whatever temperature I set it at.
I do not usually cut eggs, preferring to let them pip on their own, but I will cut eggs on day 60 if a couple have already pipped. I wanted to see if I can reduce incubation time by a few days safely. I know many people incubate faster and 55 days seems to be a good target based on what everyone else does.
I think some of the variability depends on what temperature we keep our snakes at in their tubs and racks. A female ovulates about 50 days before she actually lays eggs, during which time cell division and embryo development is occurring. In fact, almost half of egg development takes place inside the female and only half inside our incubators. My snakes are kept without hot spots and tub temps are around 86F or 30C so it maybe that this early development is what controls incubation time and a slight raise in incubator temperature for the second half of incubation might make no difference at all. We shall see!
This leads us on to TSD (Temperature Sex Determination) in Ball Pythons. TSD rather than genotypic sex determination is common in many reptiles (and some birds). Crocodiles, turtles and some lizards all have sex determination at least influenced by incubation temperature if not controlled exclusively by it. These animals are usually WZ chromosome animals where the female is the heterogametic sex and the male is a ZZ animal or homogametic. So, a male fertilising the eggs doesn’t determine sex. Temperature of incubation affects the production of the hormone aromatase, which breaks down the male sex hormones and changes the balance of hormonal development to the female side. Cooler temperatures produce less aromatase and therefore favours males.
Published in The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
embryo.asu.edu
Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in Reptiles
By: Moeller, Karla T. 2019
Ball Pythons are XY animals like humans and the male is the heterogametic sex. This alone suggests genotypic sex determination rather than TSD because it’s the chromosomes, not the temperature, that controls aromatase production during development. We also know that sex determination is genotypic in Ball Pythons from the banana gene sex link where a male banana will be either a male maker or a female maker depending upon whether it’s the X or the Y chromosome attached to the banana gene.
If gender was TSD in Ball Pythons then the banana sex link would not happen, because the Banana sex link is, by definition, genotypic sex determination.
I think however that there might be a link to temperature during meiosis in males or during sperm storage in females. Male gametes may be more sensitive to temperature, so keeping our snakes with hot spots at 30C plus might just affect the survivability of male sperm before it effects female sperm. My experience is that over many years using many different types of incubator, I have not noticed a difference in sex ratios. Individual clutches, yes. Overall no. For instance my maternal clutch was incubated at room temperature and took 72 days to hatch. 5 males and 2 females. My Savannah clutch laid the day before the maternal clutch hatched in 60 days in my incubator at much higher temperatures. 9 males and 3 females. Both male heavy unfortunately, despite very different incubation temperatures. Not statistically significant, but valid, nonetheless.
In order to test TSD, our control conditions must be very strict and as many independent variables that could affect the outcome (such as hot spot temperatures during the breeding process before eggs are even laid) removed for the results. At face value there might be a link, but showing it’s a causative link is much more difficult. The science already points to genotypic sex determination in Ball Pythons, but it’s far from “that simple”.
Very nice set up there Rob, hopefully when I have more space I can go for a bigger incubator.
Hi mate. I ran a smaller incubator for years with an on off type thermostat and it worked well. The PP thermostat I have now is much better and holds a temperature almost exactly. This larger incubator needed a fan. I only discovered that when I built it and tried it. The bigger you go, the more convection currents will stall out and not reach the top of the incubator and the only way to fix this is with a fan. Smaller incubators by and large don't need fans.
A fan itself can be a source of heat and we don't want this to be linked to the thermostat and constantly switching off. The fan needs to be on full time. So if the fan is providing heat, it needs to be "in balance" with your incubator or it will overheat even when the heat is turned off. I had to search for a fan that ran cool!
Love it Rob, ever the scientist. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But you know me, I like to experiment so this year I’m bumping it up by half a degree”. 😂
My little incubator holds 6 clutches at a time and to date has incubated 6 clutches to hatching. It has always had them pipping on day 58. It’s great to know when they are expected to hatch and at first I wondered if I should turn it down half a degree or so to get to day 60 but then on consideration I have had in those 6 clutches 35 eggs and 34 of them have been perfect hatchlings with just 1 which was severely kinked and died in the egg but as the rest of the clutch was fine I think this must have been a genetic issue with that individual snake rather than a incubation issue. It’s great to be able to have peace of mind where your incubator is concerned.
Hi Ed. You're binge watching again, catching up. Thanks for taking time to comment.
Knowing your incubator is a huge stress reducer. It also allows a little tinkering with the confidence experience brings!
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls 😂 good use of much of a bank holiday where unusually I hardly worked.
Rock solid incubator there rob.
As you live in the tropics i will forgive your error😂 prob in the egg box is a no no. Even in cooler climates.
Just like how you mentioned the temp in my egg boxes is always higher than the incubator itself. At one point I was putting the probe in one of the egg boxs but if the clutch in that box was approaching hatch date, then the residual heat from the eggs would mean that the rest of clutches in the incubator would experience a drop and quite a considerable one and way more than i was comfortable with.
In the end it was actually easier to set the prob up in the incubator and just have to aim off the wind as it were.
If i set my incubator to 88 that means that inside the egg boxs its around 90, generally speaking. The individual egg boxes will inevitably start to warm up around day 35-40 but that is negligible as this occurs naturally anyway..
Evidently, A gradual increase in temperature gradient is natural for ball pythons eggs So i don’t worry about it at all.
Hi Joe. Great point about the eggs themselves generating some of their own heat in the last few weeks of incubation. My heat cables are drawing such minimal current it's hard to tell how much heating they're actually giving to the whole set-up. I'm running a very minimal power set-up and the difference between inside and outside the egg box is minimal. If the power goes out, it's no big deal. I loose maybe a degree or so.
I can see how you'd get a big temperature difference in cold climates if the probe was in the egg box and the clutch was at 90F. Your thermostat would be fully off and the rest of the incubator would drop in temperature. Not really a problem I have.
Condensation inside the egg boxes is an additional problem. I use a little wedge under each box to set it at an angle if I need to, so condensation on the lid runs down to the low end and doesn't drip on the eggs. Usually just not touching them works the best!
Having tried just about every incubator method under the sun including the water bath with aquarium heater method, you start to think of incubators as living breathing things. Change one thing and it effects all the rest. Position of the probe, where the heat cables are, type of thermostat, incubator full of egg boxes or empty, air-conditioning on or off in the room the incubator was in......it all changes the fine tuning.
Once you have run your incubator a year, you start to get to know it and how it will react to little changes. I remember when I first set it up, I used to heat gun everything - egg boxes, water bottles, top back and sides every hour or so until I got it dialed in and was confident. Now I just switch it on and forget it. Eggs are pretty hardy and my incubator is rock solid. A lot to be said for dialing it in and then just leave it. Don't mess. Don't fuss. And above all, don't chase a temperature with constant adjustment of the thermostat. Set it and let it run.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls yess there is a lot to be said for a dialled in, calibrated, tried and tested incubator vs a newly set up one.
Smaller incubators are way easier too to control. Taller ones like yours need fans to deal with the dead zone & fans then also add another dimension. As you said, incubators become their own living and breathing thing, change one small thing and it has a knock on effect on everything else.
I always go for a more simplistic approach with incubation. less is more with incubators and i think i would rather run multiple small, simple incubators than run one big complicated one, luckily for me i can house all my project with just one small simple incubator.
One thing is for sure, a pulse-thermostat is a absolute must! Even though in my first incubator was managed by a on/off and it was successful incubator. Pulse stats are by far superior, to a point i would now regard them as the bare minimum for a new incubator build standard.