Sorry, I've been AFK for a few days and was curious as to what the results were on this and if there were any updates. 72 and counting??

Rebecca, I guess it did sound like I was saying 60 days was the set in stone time, but it wasn’t meant to sound like that. I agree that there are many variables that can affect hatch time, but 60 days tends to be the general rule of thumb for a reason. You're right, just like in humans there is variation on that 9 months, but also like in humans if there is too much deviation from that time, there is cause for concern for MANY reasons because that is the accepted standard when things are going well. Like in your clutch that went 72 days, that’s is probably one of the longer hatch times I have ever heard of being successful, but there were issues which, like you said, caused it to go that long that deviated from the norm and resulted in less than stellar results. On the 61 day clutch that is pretty much spot on the standard and the hatch and survivability rate were of the norm as well. I have had all kinds of deviation within my own clutches with pythons, the shortest was 54 days to first pipped (this was before I started double checking thermostats and cooked them .8 degrees too high). The longest I ever had was 63 and I manually pipped them on that date. 8 of the 10 were dead in the egg fully formed with yolk absorbed and the other two were fine but died about 8 meals in for unknown reasons (my guess was that something was wrong and nature has a way of deciding who should and shouldn’t hatch regardless of our will).  

Also I agree that experience has a lot to do with how well a female will brood her eggs, but coming off of them and shedding as well as just cruising is pretty strange. I have only use MI once and will probably never do it again if I have other options. Don’t get me wrong, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen happen, but I prefer to take the strain off the girls and have a little more control over the process. 

This was also an "unintentional" breeding which can cause things to be screwy as well.  Certain conditioning regimins (temp, food, etc...) which I believe hold a lot of sway on how well/poor a female will shell eggs could have been missed causing her to over shell them. There have also been other discussions about eggs with "snowflakes" (over calcification spots) on them and the percentage of those clutches that hatch normally (not manually pipped) and why these spots are on there are believed to be environmental.  This is all speculation, and is probably more in depth than really needed, but there is something to be said about environmental factors prior to ovulation that affect female fecundity.

starting to ramble....

FWIW
Tre'