So, on October 15th I found a clutch of eggs in my newly-acquired crested geckos’ enclosure.
Both looked fertile, and I was told one of the females I got was with a male previously.
So I incubated them, at around room temperature (72°F-74°F.) One seemed to stop developing early into incubation, but stayed “good” the entire time despite being empty.
The other one, however, has been doing great.
I can see a fully formed baby inside of the egg.
However, it’s starting to “sweat.” Has been for a little over a day now.
I’ve done a lot of research, but there’s a lot of conflicting information. Some say the sweating is a good sign, others say it’s a bad sign, some say the egg should be cut, some say it shouldn’t be. Several have waited it out, only for the egg to go bad and the baby inside being dead.
Should I wait it out then? Or try cutting the egg? I’m not worried about it potentially passing, but it’d be really cool to hatch out a “bonus” egg.
I have heard anecdotally that reptile eggs can do that (sweat) right before hatching. I’ve had an egg go bad after developing a spot somewhat like that, but it’s not obvious to me that your egg is going bad, especially with a baby moving around. With leopard gecko eggs, a baby about to hatch usually fills up the whole egg, so that no lights come through, but I don’t know if that’s the case for cresties. I also don’t know how long their incubation time usually is- could it be ready by now? I’ve not heard of cutting eggs in leopard geckos, but maybe it’s different for cresties?
It’s been incubating for about 68 days (likely laid a few days before I found them, but I wouldn’t be sure) at around room temperature.
They can be incubated for 60-180 days depending on what temperature they are incubated at. I opted for around room temperature (72°F-74°F) so that they would have some more time to develop, but also not take forever to hatch. So given that, it should be ready to hatch anytime now.
I do have to have the egg at a very specific angle in order to see anything, otherwise no light shines through. It looks good besides the slight brown spotting where the “sweat” has been appearing.
I don’t think people actually cut their crestie eggs like you would with snakes, but I’ve seen it mentioned so that’s why I wanted to get some insight from here about all of it.
I took a nap, came back to the egg but it had just shrunk more and I could no longer see the baby inside via candling.
Decided to open the egg, and found a fully formed, dead baby inside. It looks like it had some complications, and this I’ll blame on the fact that I wasn’t better prepared to properly incubate the eggs.
The umbilical cord was wrapped oddly around the baby, and was wrapped around the bit of organ/intestine that is sticking out. I removed it though so I could figure out where it was wrapped.
I’ll definitely be better prepared for when I breed my cresteds myself.
Just for future reference, the sweating, while not exactly common, does happen from time to time with the eggs. We have seen it in two of ours.
Also as a future reference, the egg decreasing in size a little is a pretty regular event when it gets closer to hatching. As the baby begins to absorb the yolk there is a drop in internal volume
.