Feeding with maternal incubation

Yup, but only laid two clutches this year. Lost one to my error; I failed to recognize that one tub in my janky older 40qt rack was getting much hotter than the others on the plastic (more surface contact with heat tape + entry point for wiring, I think), so I kept temps too high for any buffer and cooked that clutch during a heat wave :expressionless:

The next rack up was fine…much less temp variance. Lowered temps a few degrees to be safe and 6/7 eggs hatched healthy babies. Dead egg was gone in the first two days; unrelated to the temp swing.

Also switched from BioDude substrate to CocoBlox in the breeding racks; just cleaner and smells better in that context. Worked just as well, I think…perhaps a little more direct plastic contact, but that really wasn’t the root cause of the error.

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I’ve just come back to this thread to re-read it and refresh my memory in preparation to try MI here with our small collection. Are you still doing this? Any advice for someone wanting to try it out? We are using coco bedding, and our girls are in the V70 size tubs. Temps range from around 75-80 at the very front of the tubs, depending on the weather, and are kept at 88-90 at the warmest part. From your experience, do you think our setup will give our moms a good chance of success?

Edited b/c I noticed a grammatical mistake I’d missed. :grimacing:

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In a rack system temp and humidity are a bit harder to control, and like I suggested earlier there can be some meaningful variance between individual tubs. I think these factors are perfectly fine within reasonable ranges of a few degrees or 10-15% humidity. Just poll things pretty regularly, adjust for changes in environmental temps, and let the moms do their jobs :slight_smile:

It’s absolutely not a perfect system - I’ve lost a few eggs near the bottom of clutches that seemed to contact hot spots or struggle to breathe. I think the risk of losing eggs is meaningfully higher, but I still have a fondness for MI for other reasons - I continue to maintain that these animals have far more social intelligence than we choose to recognize, and I believe that MI + a period of keeping clutch mates together w/ parental care serves the developmental interests of the animals.

Virtually all of my MI babies are curious and express positive social behaviors. Many sit at the front edge of tubs waiting for attention. And the moms express obviously supportive behaviors while the neonates share the tubs, as the pics above show. Those are happy animals.

https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jzo.12554

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They certainly look happy to me! I understand why people remove eggs, and I take no issue with people choosing to breed and incubate in the more traditional way - but it seems to me that losing their eggs would be extremely stressful to the mothers. They obviously have a strong drive to protect their clutches, and I just typically prefer trying to work with nature as much as possible rather than trying to fight it.

I’m glad you pointed out the difference in tub temps within a rack - we have been struggling a bit with that here lately, especially on cold nights. I just can’t seem to get all the tubs quite where I want them to be all at the same time, although I think they are close enough, since everyone inside seems content and healthy. I am a little concerned about eggs, however, as they can’t move themselves if the spot they are in becomes less than ideal. However, I have heard that the females will adjust the eggs’ location sometimes if the temps change too much for her liking.

Are you still fairly happy with the coco substrate, or have you gone back to the Terra Firma? Also, I am curious how long you leave the hatchlings in with their mommas - at what point do her instincts tell her that she’s done her job and she can stop protecting the clutch? I think ideally I would want to leave them together up until the point that she would naturally be ready to leave them, so that she can have her instincts satisfied and not be upset by their sudden disappearance.

Yeah, exactly…I do think they handle the stress of egg extraction relatively well (I don’t observe a whole lot of persistent stress indicators beyond maybe hunger strikes that dissipate over a few days or weeks), but I imagine it probably has a measurable impact on trust and emotional state.

Terra Firma was much easier for humidity maintenance but really stanks over time, so I’ve stuck with coco.

For the racks, I generally measure against the hottest tub and letting the shiver response of the mothers make up the difference in the cooler tubs. I try to keep my tubs at 84-88 on plastic during incubation (a little higher measured at the mom’s chimney). I suspect I’d have more failures below 80 or above 90.

And I generally leave them with the moms for about a month. Not super scientific about it; I just wait until they’ve shed and eaten a few meals. Also depends on the mom - I remove the clutch from my most tense mom pretty quickly because she’s so reactive when I open her tub that I’m afraid she’ll accidentally hurt one. I sometimes kept the clutches together for months after that, too…just until they’re large enough to need more space than a single rack can provide.

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Thank you so much for your response! I think I will drop my heat tape temps slightly and maybe turn up the space heater a little if necessary, just to be sure I don’t end up with any hot spots above 90 degrees.

Our ambient humidity fluctuates an awful lot here, so maybe I should try the Terra Firma… it can be difficult to keep good humidity in our tubs on dry days with the coco. The stuff holds a lot of moisture when you need it to, but we’ve had trouble with it starting to go moldy after a few days. It tends to happen when someone is in shed and needs extra humidity.

Anyway, thanks again for the advice! I’m very excited to give this a try!!