Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got a new female Crested Gecko in early June, and she laid an egg in a potted plant that first weekend. I have put it in Bed-a-Beast and misted regularly. The egg has gotten much larger and is very heavy and solid. The shell is very hard. It's been about 10 weeks or more. Should I keep hoping it will hatch? I've determined to give it till September. Room temps are around 78 - 80 degrees F.
Beth

Never give up on ANY egg that's swelled in size and feels heavy and solid. This goes for just about every egg from every species. If it's bad it'll eventually look/smell bad beyond the shadow of a doubt. Until then I'd treat it like it's good, even if it sits there til christmas. Some folks will manually slit the eggs of certain species when they go over the predicted hatch date. I think this is risky in species with wider incubation temp ranges because it's more difficult to predict exactly how far along an embryo might be in it's development at any given time. For example, leachianus can take between 65 - 160 plus days to hatch depending on the exact temperature between a range of around 70 - 80 plus degrees. By my math this is a potential 10 day differential for every 1 degree temperature change, barring other variables such as humidity, etc. So if someone's thermometer was off by say 2 degrees it could potentially make a 20 day difference in predicted hatch times. Obviously these times may vary and are based more on leachianus than ciliatus, but the basic point is the same... Unless you use state of the art temperature monitoring equipment and have first hand knowledge of how long a given egg should incubate at a given temperature, you should never give up on any egg that still just plain looks good.

>>I got a new female Crested Gecko in early June, and she laid an egg in a potted plant that first weekend. I have put it in Bed-a-Beast and misted regularly. The egg has gotten much larger and is very heavy and solid. The shell is very hard. It's been about 10 weeks or more. Should I keep hoping it will hatch? I've determined to give it till September. Room temps are around 78 - 80 degrees F.
>>Beth