Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hiya all,
I have been having some issues hatching my chuckwalla eggs and was wondering if you can help me out;

- firstly, I have problems with the eggs going mouldy. Im presuming this is down to excessive moisture, what is everyones take on this?

- secondly, I have had a problem with full-term eggs; out of the ones that have survived the mould I have had 2 fail to hatch. After several weeks beyond the expected hatch-date had elapsed I opened the eggs to find perfectly-formed baby chucks that had failed to hatch. In both instances the eggshell had collapsed and enveloped the baby very tightly, which convinced me that they werent going to hatch. The eggs were from different clutches. Why do you think this happened?

For reference I incubated the first batch on vermiculite and the second on perlite (both soaked and squeezed until no more moisture would drip from it). Eggs are incubated at 89-90F.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as this is becoming understandably frustratibg.

Are your egg boxes ventilated?

Hiya,
Yes, we have several small holes in the incubation box. I believe the mould is down to too much moisture in the boxes however.

Any ideas as to why two of the eggs have failed to hatch at all> This is possibly the most frustrating part of the whole process.

As far as incubation medium, Austin and I use vermiculite. We weigh the vermiculite out, and mix it with an equal part (or slightly less) water; a 1:1 or 1.25:1 ratio of vermiculite to water. I believe this is going to be drier than the method you described. We use about 200 - 250 grams of vermiculite for each clutch. We poke about 25-40 pinholes in the container with a thumb tack. The whole container is placed into a 2.5 gallon ziplock bag, a little bit of water is added to the bottom of the bag, and a couple of slits are cut into the upper surface of the bag for ventillation. This setup helps sustain the propper moisture and humidity for the full durration of incubation, which at our prefered 84-86F, can last more than 90 days. If you get good healthy eggs, they should hatch out just fine under these conditions.
Hope this helps.
Nick & Austin

Hiya,
Thank you for the advice; I will try again with the next clutch with a drier medium.
Jo

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

Hiya,
On both occasions eggs were laid in an egg box; one of the females I have I believe is WC and laid eggs shortly after coming to me, so Im not hugely surprised that her eggs failed. The unborn offpring inside one of them was also much smaller than the others I have had, although still perfectly formed. The other non-hatcher however came from a CB female, and I successfully hatched a baby from this clutch; the unhatched baby was large and fully-formed, but just failed to emerge it would seem.