High Infertility

[IceFyre]

Hi everyone, just a couple of questions. First last year i had 168 eggs of which i only hatched 69. This year i've had 201 eggs of which 76 have gone off or were infertile 33 hatched of which 3 is deformed and i still have 92 egg looking good.
I've cut open some of the egg that went off. A lot of them had babies in that must have died in early development. I do not cool my leopard before breeding and house my males and females separate. Can, not cooling them make them less fertile ??? Is it better to keep them in colonies ?? Lastly i breed my leopards during winter months ?

 

[acpart]

With leopard geckos it doesn't usually make a difference whether you cool or not. THere are a number of reasons why you could be having such low success rates and I will list a few, but ultimately you'll have to do some detective work to figure out what's going wrong:
--females aren't being supplemented properly
--incubator is not maintaining a steady temperature
--substrate is too dry or too wet
--certain male and female combinations are not compatible genetically (are you charting which pairings are producing more successful hatches?)

Good luck in figuring it out.

Aliza

 

[thegeckoguy23]

also it could be your male did not have fertil sperm

 

[IceFyre]

Thanks guy will go check my stuff, I record all my herpetelogical data. I have 40 males that i breed with.
Thanks for advice.

 

[IceFyre]

Should i rather make up groups than breeding them separate ?

 

[Landen]

If the eggs that did not hatch had partially formed hatchlings in them then infertility is not your issue... I don't know how you have things set up but that sounds like incubation issues... hope you get it all figured out...

 

[sauroid]

would it be too late to add moisture to substrate if dryness is the suspect of low hatch rate?

 

[acpart]

As long as you don't pour water on the eggs, adding water should be OK. I've done it before with no problems.

Aliza

 

[Landen]

yeah just add a little at a time and not directly on the eggs...

 

[GeckoGathering]

Hatch Rate?

If the eggs that did not hatch had partially formed hatchlings in them then infertility is not your issue... I don't know how you have things set up but that sounds like incubation issues... hope you get it all figured out...

I would also go with incubation problem on early
terminated. Others fails could be a incubator problem too.
Using a Chicken Egg design bator, by any chance?
Breeding the females in what way? Once?
Twice? Three Times a Lady......Woops think
a song popped in place.....
Sing it if you know the words....if not. Just hum anything.
I had plenty of problems hatching eggs this
year :wall:until I switched the method of incubation.
My numbers were not as high as yours but percentage of bad was higher.
Take care. HJ