Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a breeding trio of cresteds. they are all of appropriate age and size. one female has just layed her 3rd clutch, and the other her first. the female that has just layed her 3rd clutch has layed 2 sets of nice healthy eggs before in an egglaying box(a tupperwate container with moistend peaatmoss). the past few days ive noticed both females in the egg box moving the dirt around. ive taken this to be a sign that eggs will be coming in a doy or so. well today iwas cleaning the cage and upon lifting a cermaic log in their cage noticed that both females had layed their eggs. however they layed them underneath of/ inside of this ceramic log thing. one set of eggs is extremely hard and dimpeld, the other looks to still stand a chance appearing recently layed although dry? so i have two quesations. 1, what do you think the chances of these eggs hatching are? 2, why would both the 1st time laying gecko and the gecko that has previously layed eggs in an egg box both decide to now lay there eggs outside of the egg box? is this common? the only possible explanation i can come up with is that for the past few days i have taken the egg box out nightly looking for eggs, and they picked up on this and in an effort to keep/hide thier eggs layed them elsewhere.

any comments/suggestions/help would be grealty appreciated.

I have had one of my females do this before and I found out that my laying bow was just a tad too wet so I would double check to see if your egg-laying box is too wet. It should be able to stick together but no water should be able to be squeezed out.

As for the eggs hatching they probably will, I have had some eggs with dents that have produced some killer babies. I would incubate them and just see what happens.

Hope this cleared a few things up,
Derek
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Derek Dunlop
DDReptiles
http://www.freewebs.com/ddreptiles/index.htm