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Not to beat a dead horse here Stuart, and not to hijac Julian's thread, but... my point of minimizing guesswork is based on a collaborative effort of time, and shared knowledge that incubation at temp X "should" result in a 50 day gestation period. If I understand what you are saying, you have hatched out enough clutches to collect a large enough sample by which to determine that incubating at stated cooler temperature "Y" results in a hatch on day 56. In the spirit of sharing would you be willing to let me know how many clutches you have hatched out at the cooler temperature, and what that temperature is? It would be interesting to know. Also, I'm curious to know what is the perceived benefit of a cooler incubation temp and a longer gestation? Don't misinterpret this as cynicysm, I'm truly curious about your thoughts.

As far as the pip thing and full-term death, the data seems to be all over the board.

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with you. There is a temperature regime that, through collaborative effort and shared knowledge, has been demonstrated to result in a (more or less) 50 day incubation period. All I'm saying is that that isn't the only temperature regime that can be adopted to sucessfully hatch baby chondros. The fact that not everyone sticks to the 1-5-1 method of incubation demonstrates that there is more than one way to hatch out healthy chondros.

No, I haven't hatched out enough clutches myself to produce any valid scientific data on the correlation between temperature and incubation length, but why am I being expected to come up with a whole new theory myself when you're allowed to rely on collaborative efforts and shared knowledge amongst breeders?? I'm sure there are plenty of keepers out there that have worked out their own temperature regimes tailored to their own equipment and have come to expect eggs to pip on a day after day 50 with just as much precision as the 50 day method. All thats lacking is the collaboration and shared knowledge on this data (Julian's experience will no doubt help with this, though). I also mentioned nothing about day 56, you were the one that originally suggested day 56. I have no data that would mark that day out as significant, and I've also never said there was a benefit to a longer incubation period.

With regards to pipping, I've heard more stories of full-term babies dieing in the egg because they can't break through than I have of babies dieing because they were pipped a day or two too early.

cheers

Stuart

These results should be interesting and I hope they are in your favor, JG. We've sure read our share of discussions on "to-pip, or not-to-pip" but in these discussions (at least to my awareness anyways) one parameter that I've noted that has been overlooked or ignored is the factor of egg shell toughness and its resultant effect on the baby's ability to pip on their own. Without qualification, I'm guessing that the tougher the egg shells the more demands there are on the baby for them to fully emerge. I feel the converse is also true--thin shelled eggs or those that were incubated in an environment that had a higher RH might be easier to pip and emerge.

Richy

Interesting points. I wonder if there is any difference in the percentage of healthy wild chondros that pip their eggs compared to healthy CB chondros pipping themselves? Since CB chondros have a much better diet than wild chondros maybe the average CB egg is a lot tougher than an egg produced by a wild chondro (females over calcifying eggs?)? That might explain why seemingly perfect and fully formed chondros are found dead in their eggs...nothing wrong with them except for the fact they've not evolved to break through such a tough egg and therefore don't make it.