Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All,

The other day my 5 yr old daughter caught an alligator lizard and wanted to keep it, so we bought a 10 gal. aquarium and set it up to look like the area where we found the lizard. Today, we came home to about 10 eggs in the cage! 3 of them look crumpled up. The eggs were not laid all together, they were spread out around the cage.

So... What do I do? So far I've just done nothing and left the eggs in the cage, should I take them out?

This is a madrean alligator lizard caught in northern AZ.

Thanks,
-Sam

These are my suggestions - there's more than one way to do it.

Get a container, I use a potato salad bucket.

Fill it most of the way full with a mixture of vermiculite and water. The mixture should be moist but not wet. I do 1:1 by weight - and then add a tini bit more water, but not much more.

Use your finger to make a dimple for each egg - and then carefully put the egg in the dimple w/o rolling it over. At some point early on, the embryo attaches itself to top of egg, and rolling it over can drown it.

Cover the container with saran wrap, secured with a large rubberband. Once a week - briefly remove saran wrap and wave your hand over it to mix the air.

6 to 9 weeks later you hopefully will have hatchlings.
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3.6 L. getula californiae - 16 eggs (Cal. King)
1.1 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
3.3 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - 14 eggs (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

Thanks,

Can you tell me about the denting or crumpling of the eggs?
Right now all the eggs have a dents in them.

This is in northern AZ, 5500 ft elevation, it is not extremely warm, but it is very dry here, it hasn't rained in a couple weeks. I read somewhere that the eggs can dent if it's too dry, but like I said it's naturally very dry, should I be concerned?

The dents are most likely due to lack of humidity. When in a humid environment, they hopefully will pop back out.
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3.6 L. getula californiae - 16 eggs (Cal. King)
1.1 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
3.3 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - 14 eggs (Cal. Alligator Lizard)