Hi everybody, I just need a bit of advice regarding two females that are due to lay at any moment now. I will not be home this weekend and while both females do have lay boxes with moist sphagnum moss to deposit their eggs in I am still really worried that 1 or both of them will lay while I’m gone and the eggs are going to dry up and possibly die, do you guys think they will be fine if some eggs are laid or should I make some other adjustments to humidity or heat (currently at 82 degrees) ?
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As long as their moss is reasonably moist, they should be fine. It won’t hurt if you give the moss an extra few squirts with the mist bottle, making it a bit more damp than usual. Even if your girls somehow magically laid their full clutch 15 minutes after you left (impossible), the eggs would survive until Sunday night or Monday morning. The worst case scenario would probably be that they might get a bit dehydrated and dent a little bit. If that did happen, you would just put them into their incubation medium and cover them well with damp moss. The shells are surprisingly porous (or denting wouldn’t be possible either). They will plump back up within a couple of days with no harm done.
Of course, this presumes that the females have no issues laying. That’s another thing altogether. Odds are great that they’ll be fine, and I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but dystocia is a possibility, even though it’s a small one.
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A properly prepared lay box can easily keep the eggs at the right moisture level for many days. The only risk I can think of for the eggs is if the females decided to lay outside of their lay box, but chances are, if they’re already settled in their boxes, that they won’t choose to lay outside of the box.
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