Key Technical Points for Egg Incubation in Gecko Farming
Currently there are two methods: natural incubation and artificial incubation. Small-scale breeders generally use the natural incubation method, while large-scale farms generally use the artificial incubation method.
1. Natural incubation: Select the collected gecko eggs, remove the damaged, deformed, and infertile ones, and place them in a mesh box made of fine gauze. Keep the indoor temperature at 30-33°C and the relative humidity at 70%-80%. After about 90 days, young geckos will hatch. Eggs laid before July 15 of the same year should be incubated promptly in batches as they are collected, so they hatch as soon as possible and still have some time to grow while the temperature is suitable. Eggs laid in the second half of the year should be collected and stored at 12-13°C, then incubated the following year when the natural temperature reaches 30°C.
2. Artificial heated incubation: There are two methods. One is to place the mesh box containing fertilized eggs into a small room and heat the room, keeping the indoor temperature at 30-33°C and the relative humidity at 70%-80%. If a coal stove plus an electric heater is used for heating, the incubation temperature can also be controlled at 33-35°C. The method is to use a coal stove to provide the base temperature for the incubation room, and use an electric heater to supply the temperature the coal stove cannot reach. The electric heater must be connected to a thermostat controller to keep the indoor temperature constant.
The other artificial incubation method is incubation using an incubator. The incubator is a large box made of wood or metal materials, equipped with a device that can control temperature and humidity. The incubation temperature can be controlled at 36°C and the relative humidity at 75%. Be careful to keep the air inside the incubator fresh. When artificial incubation is adopted, eggs in autumn can also be incubated. The hatched young geckos are raised indoors with heating, and when the outdoor temperature reaches above 25°C, they are moved out of the greenhouse for rearing, which is more favorable for their growth.
Rearing of Juveniles
Newly hatched young geckos are 0.5-0.6 cm in body length and 3.5-5.3 g in weight. They cannot be released freely or allowed to run around at will; otherwise, because they are weak and cannot catch feed insects, long-term starvation and reduced resistance will cause death. Therefore, newly hatched young geckos should be kept in mesh boxes for concentrated rearing for a period. When they grow to have a certain ability to catch food, release them to move freely.
For young geckos kept in mesh boxes, sufficient small live feed insects should be provided, such as yellow mealworms, silkworms, flies, etc., so that they can catch them easily. Eggs incubated in spring hatch into juveniles in August, when the temperature is exactly suitable for growth and development, so heating need not be considered; only attention should be paid to providing sufficient feed insects and adequate clean drinking water. However, eggs incubated in autumn hatch into juveniles by late October, when the temperature is already low and unsuitable for growth. To ensure the survival rate of the juveniles, the room should be heated, keeping the rearing room temperature at 26-30°C and the humidity at 70%-80%, so that they can safely overwinter in such an environment.
Young geckos hatched in October should not be allowed to hibernate during their first hibernation period, because such juveniles are not strong in vitality. If they enter hibernation without storing more nutrients in their bodies, and then consume part of their body nutrients during overwintering, their constitution will be even weaker after emerging from dormancy the following year, causing mass death.