Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, so my husband and I bred my female German Giant and ended up encountering some financial issues right before she laid, so needless to say, we weren't able to buy an incubator, so we made our own. Its a tub fill up a few inches with water, and we have the eggs sitting in vermiculite in a dish covered with moss and there is a lid on the tub with a small hole with screen over it. The temperature has been right around 82 and humidity has been pretty much perfect. But today I went to check on them and apparently a couple of the eggs had broken open and fruit flies managed to get in somehow and lay eggs. So 3 or 4 of the eggs had the icky worm things on them and we threw them out. If there are some worms that we didn't happen to find (cuz we took all of the ones that we found out) would they try to get into the healthy eggs? And there is an egg with a little bit of mold on it, but otherwise it looks healthy, we candled it and it's nice and red with veins...should we just leave it alone? Should we just transfer all of the eggs into a new dish? Any other suggestions would really help too! Our first clutch didn't make it cuz hubby thought that completely burying the eggs in the vermiculite would be better than covering them in moss and they all died :banghead: ...he wouldn't listen to me about using moss. Please help! Even if I only get one baby out of this I will be more than ecstatic.

I think I would move them to a new container, with new vermiculite. I would use either a large deli type container (they sell the big 9 or 11" round containers) with a lid on it. You could also use a plastic shoebox. Use fresh vermiculite, bury the eggs about 3/4 in the vermiculite and make sure the vermiculite is moist, not wet, but moist. Cover the container and only put a couple, maybe 2 small holes on each end......you can adjust this to keep the amount of humidity in the container. I would take this container and place this in a larger container with water on the bottom. You can use a couple bricks or whatever to raise the egg container up off the bottom. Similar to how a havobator would work. No moss on top of the eggs. Keep 82-84(or some have said higher temps are ok, but play it safe if you are relying on room temps, dont put it in too hot of a place). It might just be cheaper/easier to buy a cheap $30 havobator or however much they cost, lol.

It is very easy to make a home made incubator, plenty of sites online will show you how to do it.

The big thing about your setup is you have a big hole in the container the eggs are in with screen over top...this just allows humidity and heat to escape and fruit flies or other predatory flies to get in. Deli dish, vermiculate mixed with water in a 1:1 ratio by Weight. A couple holes in the lid..small pinhead holes. Low to mid 80's F (80-85F) is fine.

One thing that concerns me though..is the fact you mentioned your finances are tight...too tight to buy an incubator (typical hovabator is about $30). If that isn't something you can get, it will cost far more to take care of a single hatchling bearded dragon for a few weeks. It may be better to freeze the clutches you have now, and toss the eggs. By the time the third or fourth clutch is laid, if finances are better, then incubate that one.

keep in mind the biggest cost with breeding dragons is feeding the young. It can cost quite a bit per week to feed ravenously hungry babies. For instance: Average clutch size, say 15 eggs. Each baby eats average of 50 crickets a day spread over several meals. (some can eat as much as 100 crickets a day...or more, but going with low average). So right there, per day you have 15 babies eating 50 crickets. Which means, you need at least 5250 crickets a week to feed your babies. Typically costs about $10 per 1000 crickets from most mail order/online places. So you are looking at $60 a week (rounding up to nearest 1000 to make it simple, covers tax and/or shipping).

I don't know how big your clutch sizes are, but if they are on the larger size, say 20 eggs per clutch and the babies eat more than 50 crickets a day, say 100, then you are looking at $150 for crickets a week.

Typically, takes about 6 weeks for dragons to get to that nice well established size of at least 6" snout to tail length. So feeding a small clutch (15 in example above) will cost $360 for 6 weeks and the larger clutch $900.

Right now lllreptile has special on a hovabator incubator including deli dishes and "hatchright incubator medium for $50, bit more than my guess above...but other places may have better prices.

Not trying to discourage or assume you are not prepared for breeding bearded dragons...just going from what you described in your post.
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PHLdyPayne

The cheapest incubator I've found locally is $60. Hubby got laid off a few months ago and just found a new job, and I just had a baby so I'm a stay at home mom, starting my own business. So thank goodness he's got a job, and we'll be able to feed the babies just fine by the time they hatch. No worries!

http://lllreptile.com/store/catalog/reptile-supplies/reptile-incubators/-/thermal-hova-bator-incubator1602n/
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Judson
Beach Beardies

0.1. bearded dragon
1.1. Sugar Gliders
0.2. Felines *queen athena and missy*