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Mold on eggs??

tim88

tim88

The system is down
A few of the eggs that I have incubating now are starting to get some mold on them. First off, what causes mold and is there a way to not get it in the first place? Last year I ran in to the same problem and lost a few eggs to mold. Next, can mold spread? With some of the clumped eggs I have, I'm wondering if it could spread throughout all of them. Finally, what kills the mold? I've heard you can use athlete's foot cream or Listerine to kill it off. What would you recommend?

Thanks
 
Tim...

I personally have no expierence with mold, but I would assume it caused the same way as any mold. High humidity. Try leaving the egg container open for a little while and let the substrate dry out a little.

I have heard both athlete's foot powder and listerine. I think I would try the listerine first. Foot fugus powder seems a bit harsh chemical wise to me.

Just my opinion though.

Quigs
 
I'm using foot fungus powder on my eggs, applied with a makeup brush. I'm having a lot of problems with mold this year. At first I thought it was the water, so I changed all my eggs to new vermiculite, but now I'm still having problems, so maybe it's the new vermiculite? (argh!). In any case most of the treated eggs are looking GREAT (I had a whole clump of four eggs that was white and fuzzy)... some aren't looking good, but they may have never been viable in the first place.

Also the COLOR of the mold is a big important piece of information. If it is white, you fight it. IF it is a beautiful teal green, chances are you might have lost the egg. I had three eggs turn blue-green... two died so far, and one is well separated from the rest and treated like all the rest, but I do not think it is alive. However the white fuzzy ones give every appearance of being fully alive.

By the end of July all my statistics for this year's snakes should be in and I'll feel like I'm an expert on mold on eggs. Until then I can only hope I'm doing the right thing. Next year, if I can figure out how to do it, I'm going the no-substrate way.
 
Types of Mold

I used the `listerine on a q-tip/ear bud method on the bluey-green mold and it worked a treat. I had to use it once more a few days later and haven`t been troubled by it since. With regard the white fluffy mold i just reduced the humidity slightly / made sure the vermiculite wasn`t to wet and that seems to have stopped the progress of the white fluff although it hasn`t gone away completly - the eggs it is on appear to be still Ok.Hope that helps you out.
 
Of all the eggs I have now, 3 of them have white mold on them and 1 of them has blue/green mold on it. I guess I better do something about it!
 
Hi Sasheena!, They haven`nt hatched yet . They`re currently almost 44 days into their incubation so i`m guessing another week or two and we shall see. There is only one really dubious looking one and it`s not one of the ones that had the blue/green mold on it - it`s just kind of sunk in on itself over the past couple of weeks. I`m dying to see if the other seven make it - They`ll be the first corns we`ve ever produced.How are yours doing now - I Saw your pictures, those blue ones did`nt look to healthy. Good luck with them.
 
Hey, well I'll be interested in the report on the blue one if it hatches or not. I had some that sunk in on themselves... THEN they turned blue... pretty bad. Right now amongst my cornsnake eggs... I have one group of 10 that has four that are white and fuzzy and I've been battling that for some time, but all ten eggs are chock FULL of veins. The second group of 6 has the one blue egg and five white ones... the blue one looks worse every time I open up the container, so I think I might chuck it. Or I might move all the questionable ones to a separate container to see what happens... but I don't want to move questionable ones from different corn clutches to the SAME other container... what if they hatch and I don't see which is which? How will I ever know their genes if I don't know who they are? My clutch of 21 corn eggs lost one early, the remaining eggs are fine, except a couple of those are "sweating" but I'm not sure what is causing that. Of my cal king eggs... 10 out of 12 (the real blue eggs were the 2 dead eggs) are doing GREAT. The other clutch of 15 has two or three that are questionable. One egg box SMELLS when I open it, but I haven't figured out the "culprit egg" yet. I just hope to get as many as were destined to hatch, and try to not flip out over those that nature did not intend to hatch for whatever reason.

At least I will feel a little bit better about losses after this year! I feel like it's so many... but any loss under the 100% hatch rate I had last year is going to feel bad! Sometimes I wish I'd had a harder time last year so I might have learned enough to not make the same mistakes this year! Oh well, we'll see!
 
I have a problem with mold now too. The humidity was made a bit higher because the eggs were a bit dehydrated when I finally got to them. My momma snake has gone through some rough times and I'd hate to see her lose her clutch after everything.

I'm going to wash the eggs and use some listerine. All the eggs look very healthy and aren't showing any signs of smell and are a good color, though one egg is indented at the top quite a bit and probably wont make it, but I'll give it a chance.

I'm using a moss for bedding for the eggs and was wondering if maybe using something along the lines of perlite might be better. The mold seems to be growing on the medium and has only crept up to the eggs as of today.
 
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