Egg box advice

[Feebo]

My gravid Western Hognose is due to lay soon and I`ve got a question for you guys and girls. :) I`ve only ever bred my Corn snakes before, once, so I`m new to breeding basically. When I incubated my Corn eggs, they were sat straight on damp vermiculite which I didn`t really like. If they can be damaged by water dropplets, you don`t really want them actually sitting on damp vermiculite do you? They were fine, they hatched, but I worried about that. I`ve been keeping the egg box for a few weeks so I know I`ve got the conditions right in there before it`s needed, but I thought I`d ask if anyone has any suggestions or can put my mind at rest a little. I read about a guy using some sort of soft plastic grid, that sounds good, if only I had some, but maybe there`s a more simple answer that I don`t know about? Or maybe I shouldn`t even worry about setting the eggs staraight onto the damp vermiculite? Cheers for your help... :D

[infernalis]

Let me look up the pictures I took of the incubator I made for my milk eggs, I was given the advice from a great breeder friend and it worked out well.

[infernalis]

Found it...

Here is what I did, the large tote box has a small layer of water on the bottom (to keep humidity up) then I placed a pie pan upside down in the water, then I put the egg clutch in a bowl that was partially filled with semi moist coconut fiber (from the "bricks" commonly sold.

I inserted the probe of the combo humidity and temperature readout into that, fed the wire to the outside and set the readout on top of the tote.

This arrangement kept the humidity up around 80-90 percent, but kept the eggs from getting wet and growing mold.

all 9 eggs pipped out superbly.

http://www.danceswithreptiles.com/milk/tote.jpg

[Feebo]

I could put my thermostat sensor into that set up I suppose couldn`t I.... I`ve got a few small snakes in my incubator at the moment but they can be moved around to find a suitable temperature. Maybe I might even have time to get a thermometer like that one off Ebay... I hadn`t thought of the coconut husk though! Nice one, I`ve got some of that for my snails, (I breed tropical snails) Hmmm... Thanks Infernalis, I`ll try that I think, maybe as well as what I`ve already done and then decide which one I`ll go with depending on performance. Cheers ! Any other suggestions are very welcome folks, the more information I have here the better........

[infernalis]

That readout is commonly sold in department stores and hardware stores for monitoring weather conditions.

If I remember correctly I paid around $12 US for that.

[Feebo]

Yeah I`ve just ordered one off Ebay for about that, I`ll set it up and see how it goes. My incubator is maintaining a good temperature so it`s jusy a little more humidity I need now, i`m only showing 70% at the moment but I`d like that confirmed by another measuring device ideally anyway, I don`t like to just trust one, how would I know if it wasn`t working? :)

[infernalis]

Makes perfect sense to me. :)