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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.
Haha! Lateral thinking there Catherine! That always comes in handy. My Dad was an engineer, and he always told me that there is no problem without a soultion. That there is technically a solution to everything. All you need is the wit to figure it out and the ability to accept it, whatever it is.

That is a great solution!

Ouch! Those eggs sound pretty big. I am glad I'm not a Corn Snake.

Now it's just regulated warmth and patience....and we will see what happens next.
The big eggs were pine snake eggs and they are 7 foot long snakes. Corn snakes are 3-5 feet long and they have tiny eggs.
At 7 feet long pine snakes are still not that big. They are quite slender. Now that I think of it, the eggs are pretty big for the size of the snake.

Your dad was right about problems and solutions. We wanted to have a sophisticated thermostat system to regulate heat. Instead we put together a basic heat source regulated by a simple thermostat. The heat rises from the pot of water and  keeps the incubator warm.  It should do the job just fine. The eggs will all hatch when their time comes and we will laugh about how funny our incubator is.

It does take patience to hatch reptile eggs, They take months and they must be kept quiet and unmoved while the baby develops. That is why the moms leave them. The eggs are safer without her. She might disturb the eggs or at very least she would contaminate them.

We just take little peaks now and then to make sure they are okay. Dead eggs have to be removed because they can kill the living ones.

By the end of June the first eggs should start hatching.
Oh right...I got mixed up there and now I see it is the Pine snakes who lay big eggs. But even so, that must be hard work Confused 

I like 'lateral thinkers'. They can usually come up with a solution to a problem no matter how unusual it is! I am sure the iincubator will work very well.

It is quite a skill to guard the eggs. How can you tell which ones are 'dead' so that you can remove them in time?
Dead eggs go moldy very quickly. The mold can then spread and kill the other eggs. Dead eggs don't grow in size as the baby grows and they get soft and lose shape. Infertile eggs are smaller and they are not the beautiful white of a healthy egg. They don't have the firmness.

I think the emergency solution can work for a long time. Some people are good at finding solutions. They think quickly and they know what needs to be done. We needed a heat source that could be regulated. Fish tanks have heat sources that are regulated.

Now we just have to wait and see. The pine snake eggs are big. We will be able to tell if the babies are growing. The eggs will get bigger. The hatching is going to be sweet. They are such pretty babies. I just have to remember to take pictures.
The incubator is fixed. We were able to get the part we needed.

The old school method of keeping the eggs going worked though. Never underestimate what you can do when you have to.

I now have 76 eggs in the incubator and at least ten at home with Firebird who is still laying them. For a slender snake she has a fair number a healthy looking eggs.