Chook Me! - Success with homemade incubator?

Success with homemade incubator?

I'm looking into using a homemade incubator for my leopard gecko eggs (in the near future that is) and was hoping to find someone who knows a little about this. Has anyone had some success with a homemade incubator? What size styrofom box should I use? I've read different temps will produce different genders, if I'm using a nightlight, is there a way to have a higher or lower temp? Any useful information is greatly appriciated. Thank you in advance.

Public Comments

Here's a good step-by-step diagram on creating your own incubator. http://www.albeysreptiles.com/incubate-eggs.htm Eggs are easy to hatch. In fact, you get to have a powerful job, if you wish, since gecko eggs are temperature sex dependent. This means that the sex of the gecko is not determined at fertilization, but is set during the first two weeks in captivity by the high daytime temperature you expose the eggs to. A daytime high that does not exceed 82 F will give you all female offspring, but if you want to make that egg a "male" then you simply place the egg where it will experience 90-92 F as a daytime high during the first two weeks of incubation. If you keep "male" eggs at a constant 89-91 F you may have some embryos die from heat stress or if they are exposed to temps over 92 F they may become what we call "hot" or high temperature females, which never reproduce and often bully their cage mates. A temp somwhere in between (84-88 F) will produce roughly 1/2 males and 1/3 females (potentially).
you can use a styrfoam box 2-3 feet by 2-3 feet , and use a heat mat to provide heat source, but use a thermostat to keep the temp from going too high, and keep the vermiculite moist but not wet , and the temreture should be constant 87-88 degrees F....ive bred bearded dragons which is very similar
Or you can just buy a $40 Hovabator. They work extremely well for leopard gecko eggs, and you can control the temperature if you wish to do temperature sexing as you mentioned. You can get one at: http://lllreptile.com