or scattered in the cage. I have hatched hundreds of chuckwalla eggs with the method you describe with no problems. Believe it or not moisture and temp(to a certain extent of course) do not seem to be detrimental to chuckwalla eggs. It is probably the eggs were not healthy at laying. A big problem when they are scattered in the cage is bacteria from old feces and uneaten food on the eggs. It sounds as if the babies dying in the egg could simply be caused by them being to weak to get out. I would say there are deeper causes than your incubation method which has worked very well for me. This sort of thing seems to be quite common in freshly collected animals where the females are under a lot of stress and are not feeding correctly up until egg depositio. Maybe also caused by being unfamiliar to their surroundings. Did you happen to move the animals arounf during the gestation period?
Tom