Once they eggs have been laid and uncovered, they will need to be transferred to an egg container and placed inside your incubator. We recommend purchasing small plastic shoe boxes that you can get at any Wal*Mart for $1 and filling the inside with about 2″ of vermiculite. Make sure to add enough water to the vermiculite to make it damp and moist, but not soggy. You should be able to squeeze together a ball of vermiculite and have it stick together without dripping a lot of water.

After making sure the vermiculite has the right density, press down into the vermiculite with your thumb about 3/4″ making small little indentations to hold the eggs. Place the eggs inside the indentations making sure they sink down into the vermiculite some - you don’t want to bury the eggs. After placing the eggs into the container, place the lid tightly onto the container and place inside your incubator.

The incubator should be set at a temperature of between 82 and 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Average incubation time at this temperature is between 65 and 72 days. Make sure to add a container of water to your incubator to help keep humidity levels up. You want just enough humidity so that water droplets form on the top and sides of the incubator (or lids of the egg containers) but not so much that it drips down onto the eggs. The eggs need to stay dry. If they become wet and covered with water, the water will suffocate the eggs by restricting air flow between the embryo inside the egg and the outside world.