Here's a case I thought I would share with other breeders. There is often concern and question about mould on eggs, what it means, what should be done to prevent it, and whether it spreads to kill viable eggs.
My observations through the years have always been that mould starts only on poorly calcified, weak, or infertile eggs and generally wont spread to kill viable eggs.
I almost never remove infertile eggs from a clutch if they are adhering to good eggs, nor do I do anthing to try to stop the mould.
Here's a case study for your observation.
This small clutch of spotted pythons consisted of a dozen eggs. At first they all looked good, but transillumination (candling) revealed 4 eggs with no embryo, no blood vessels.
As time passed the non viable eggs began to mould rather badly. Some surrounding good eggs were almost covered with mould from the surrounding bad eggs, although it wasn't really growing well or spreading on the good eggs. An interesting "nuclear orange"
mould eventually took over and liquid seeped from the rotting eggs and made quite an interesting mess.
I purposely made no attempt to interfere or remove the mould, so I could photograph nature taking its course.
The 8 good eggs all hatched perfectly healthy baby pythons... All this despite being surrounded by mould...
here's how it looked
The photo below shows an egg which was completely surrounded by non viable decomposed eggs. When the baby in the good egg pipped the mouldy dead egg fell off, and is seen next to the hatchling.
This baby emerged from a sea of mould, but is perfectly healthy... Note the egg tooth is visible
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