Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Help! My daughters; beardie laid 14 eggs today. she is paired with a male, so they may be fertile eggs. Never thought she'd lay eggs, but today she was digging a lot, so we built a quick nesting box in an old aquarium, and within 24 hours, she laid a clutch. Now what? We have the eggs in a plastic shoe box with damp vermiculite/perilite. It is under a heat lamp and trying to figure out how to get it to 85 degrees based on lighting distance. This will change in the day vs night. Suggestions? How do I pick out any back eggs? or avoid fungus/mold?

Concerned mom of many pets, and a very excited daughter.

I suggest researching how to properly incubate eggs. You need to set up an incubator, or buy one. There are several reptile ones available, such as the hovabator.

A heat lamp is only going to dry out the eggs, especially if they are exposed. YOu also need to monitor and control the temperature, you don't want the eggs to get hotter than 85F, higher temps will kill the eggs. A good incubation temp is 82-83F. You will need to get a good thermostat or rheostat to ensure the heating element doesn't get too hot.

It isn't too difficult to build an incubator, a well insulated glass aquarium would do, but better to use something like a standard cooler. Heat cord/tape attached to a proportional thermostat or even a on/off type will keep temps inside the cooler in the range you need. Also, keep the incubator in a cooler room, so if it does get too hot inside, its can turn off to cool it down. If the room is too hot, then over heating is a high risk, even if the heating element is off.

There are also plenty of DIY guides online to walk you through in detail how to build an incubator, just google them.

Depending on how the eggs are doing right now, it may not be possible to hatch out this clutch. However expect to get more eggs in the next 2-4 weeks, as dragons multi-clutch. Also, if you didn't really intend for your daughter's dragons to mate and produce eggs, I suggest separating the dragons. Otherwise, you will be getting fertile eggs every year. Also, a male/female pair can end up with the female being stressed by the male's constant attempts to mate. IN the long run, best to always keep dragons separate, except when introducing to breed.
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PHLdyPayne

Forum Princess

Thank you for the reply. The adult dragons get along great. She loves to sit on his back, and he never seems to mind letting her do what she wants. She does not appear to be stressed at all. We will attempt to built an incubator and see what happens. I am not being too hopefuly but this is a good experiment for the family. I have bread other animals in the past, butnever a reptile. Thank you for the advice.