The great incubator crisis!

[Catherine]

We will laugh about this. When all the snake eggs hatch safely, we will have a good laugh, but not until then.

It all started when the reptile centre southern pine snake Ella started to lay her eggs. She is my Danny pine snake's mum and she is special.  We set her up in a nest box so she could lay her eggs in peace.

Then we needed to make sure the big incubator was working. The thermostat blew out. That means the heat stays on when it is plugged in and stays off when it is unplugged. We can't regulate the temperature. I have 57 eggs in three boxes and Ella has a whole clutch. It was already really late at night, so no stores open anywhere.
Nothing we tried would get it working.

So we went old school and jury rigged something. It is not pretty, but it seems to be working.

We took the ceramic pot from inside a slow cooker, filled it with water and added an old style aquarium heater, with a thermostat and placed it in the incubator. Those old heaters were good.  It heats the water and the water heats the incubator. The incubator was made from an old 1950 frig. It holds the heat very well and it has lots of shelves for the egg boxes. When it gets to a certain temperature the heater shuts off for a while. It doesn't look good, but it works.

Ella? She is fine. She laid 11 eggs each one much bigger than a chicken egg. No wonder she looked pregnant. This is the biggest clutch she has ever laid. It will be 9 weeks before Ella's eggs hatch and my first clutch won't hatch until the end of June.
I will keep you posted on how the eggs are doing.

We will see if we can get a new thermostat and get it running properly again, but for now, three cheers for aquarium heaters.