incubator trouble

[lynnefay]

my incubator went on the fritz. it dropped for 5 or so hours to 78 then 73for about 20 minutes while i tried to fix it.
i had had it at 89 for my russian tortoise eggs, got it to go to about 87. am buying new incubator this morning, but is it too late for my eggs? they are 5 weeks along

 

[Tom]

my incubator went on the fritz. it dropped for 5 or so hours to 78 then 73for about 20 minutes while i tried to fix it.
i had had it at 89 for my russian tortoise eggs, got it to go to about 87. am buying new incubator this morning, but is it too late for my eggs? they are 5 weeks along

Not at all. I've had eggs of a tropical species drop to 65 degrees for at least a whole night when a mouse chewed through a cord, and those eggs hatched out just fine.

Your eggs getting too cool for a minute won't hurt them. Your eggs getting too hot is likely to kill the embryos, so be careful with the new incubator. Watch the temperature very closely for a couple of days. Better to set it too low to start with, and very gradually work your way back up.

 

[lynnefay]

Not at all. I've had eggs of a tropical species drop to 65 degrees for at least a whole night when a mouse chewed through a cord, and those eggs hatched out just fine.

Your eggs getting too cool for a minute won't hurt them. Your eggs getting too hot is likely to kill the embryos, so be careful with the new incubator. Watch the temperature very closely for a couple of days. Better to set it too low to start with, and very gradually work your way back up.

thank you! i hardly slept last night worrying.

 

[turtlesteve]

You are very lucky it failed in that manner. Overheating is much worse and would have killed the eggs. I’ve had this happen and heard of several other instances, seems to be a common problem with reptile egg incubators.

The repti-bator seems to be the simplest and perhaps less failure prone, but still has no actual failsafe or redundancy in the design.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

I've had Redfoot eggs outside in the upper 50s that hatched