Candling Eggs

For many first-time breeders, gathering your first crested gecko eggs for the first time is an exciting but scary experience. If you are anything like I was when I first started collecting and hatching eggs, you are wondering what a "fertile" egg looks like and what an "infertile" egg may look like. Hopefully this may help you!

When you first gather your eggs, allow them a day's rest before trying to candle it. Freshly laid eggs will be hard to candle because the development has barely begun. Give the egg some time to get started before trying to look inside.

After a day's rest, get yourself a small pocket flashlight and turn your lights out. Hold your egg gently between your fingers, not so tight you're going to crush it, but don't be lilly-livered and hold it like it's made of fairy dust, you might drop it! I usually hold it at the top and bottom poles of the egg. Hold the egg over the flashlight, but don't allow it to touch, the surface is hot.

Let's take a peek inside, shall we..?



Hopefully at the end of all that, you have yourself a new little baby!

If after looking at your eggs for a couple days, maybe even closer to a few weeks and you're not seeing any of this fun stuff, then there's a possibility you are the unlucky chap with an infertile egg. Infertile eggs are often because it's the female's first season (a virgin female), or it's the first few eggs of the season. Don't get down though, she'll lay fertile ones eventually! Here's some information on "inferts"...



I hope this has helped to shed some light on the candling process. Good luck!