Egg incubation

Before the eggs

Know whether the species lays eggs or gives birth. Boas, blue-tongued skinks, garter snakes, and Jackson's chameleons in this library are live-bearing. Their care sheets leave incubation days empty on purpose.

The box

Use an incubator with a thermostat you can check against a second thermometer. Many reptile eggs are incubated in a slightly damp medium such as hatchrite, perlite, or vermiculite. The medium should clump when squeezed and then break apart, not drip. Do not turn reptile eggs the way poultry eggs are turned. Mark the top and keep that face up.

Temperature

The care sheet gives a published range where one is known. The clutch tracker stores the middle of that range as the estimate. A degree or two changes both the date and, for some species such as leopard geckos, the sex ratio. Write down the temperature you actually measured.

Failure

Collapse, strong odor, or mold that is not the ordinary fuzz on a healthy egg are reasons to ask a reptile vet or an experienced breeder, not to keep opening the box. Candling takes practice. A red ring or a dried egg is not saved by a warmer setting.

Hatch

Raise humidity slightly as the hatch window opens, and give the neonates the same quarantine you would give a new animal. They do not go straight into the adult rack.