Incubation day 72 - should I cut open the eggs?
 

Hi all! I'm new to this forum and to breeding cornsnakes. My two snakes bred months ago, and the female laid her eggs on July 4th. She laid 29 eggs and most were slugs. A few went bad during the incubation process, and we are currently left with 6 eggs.

These 6 eggs are still viable and look great. There are still veins when candled. This is my first time incubating cornsnake eggs so I have a DIY incubator. The first few weeks I had a lot of trouble stabilizing the temperature, so I feel like that has probably delayed the hatching process.

We have just hit the 10 week mark so I am wondering if I should go ahead and cut the eggs open, or should I keep waiting for them to hatch on their own? Again, I am very new to all this so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Nope! There's really no reason to cut. My eggs this year were hatching day 68 when incubated at 82 to 84 degrees. In years with lower temps it's taken up to 85 days.

Thanks! That makes me feel better. Temp is around 84 degrees but no matter what I do, I can't get the humidity above 75%, so that is probably prolonging the incubation. I guess I'll just leave them be and be patient!

Yeah, just wait them out. They will either hatch or they won't. If they weren't destined to hatch, cutting them open probably won't gain you or them anything.

BTW, lightly spray them with water and watch what happens. Good eggs will absorb the water whereas bad ones will not. Assuming that they aren't already in a very wet environment, of course.

Good luck!