This is my third you of being a midwife for beardies. I have Cooper and two girls: Popcorn and Tatty. Most beardies have to brumate for a couple months before they are ready to breed. You can easily find an article about brumation on this site. Once you raise the temperatures higher they go into courtship mode. Mating involves head bobbing, bowing, circling, arm-waving, and finally the male bites the female on the back of her neck, lifts her tail, and inserts a hemipenis. It looks violent, and is. The ladies will have bite marks and slight bleeding on or around their face. It is best to keep sexes separate except for mating opportunities. After successful mating, the female will gain a significant amount of weight. Several days before she is due to lay, you will feel eggs and see their outline in her belly.
This is really important. You need to provide her a proper nest site or she will not deposit them and may become eggbound and die. I used a square 40 gallon aquarium and filled it with slightly moist sand and potting soil. I put in 20 pounds of this mixture. I clamp a heat lamp on one end and shine it on the substrate. When she is ready to lay she will scratch, scratch, scratch in her vivarium and pace along the walls and doors. Then she must be placed in her matenity box. She will dig,dig, dig, and nearly drive you crazy. Then finally she will deposit the eggs and carefully cover them. She will be noticeably skinnier.
At this time you need a reliable incubator. I use the hovabator available at Farm King for about $35.00. Other folks on this site may tell you how to make a home-made one. You put water in the bottom of the little humidty tray and put a thermometer inside and try to keep the temperature stable at about 82-84 degrees. Place the eggs in a deli container with holes in the lid that is half filled with sterile vermiculite or perlite. Make little indentations in this substrate and place the eggs in the substrate facing up in the same direction they were laid. Never turn them or you risk killing the embryo. You must make sure that the little humidity tray in the incubator keeps water in it at all the time and always check to keep your substrate damp (not wet!)
If all goes well, the eggs will hatch in anywhere from 55-75 days. The eggs will collapse about 24-48 hours before they hatch. The babies will slit the membrane with an egg tooth. It may take them 24-48 hours to completely emerge. YOu should probably leave them in the incubator 24 hours before moving them to a vivarium. Make sure the vivarium has only paper towels or newspaper on the bottom. Some beardies may have a yolk sac attached to their umbilicus. Let it fall off on its own and don't pull it or you may kill them. They probably won't eat for 2-3 days and then after that you will need to have thousands of small crickets or phoenix worms to feed them. Beardies can eat 50-100 pin head crickets per day for each animal. YOu will definately want to get bulk shipments. I prefer to start my babies on phoenix worms because of the calcium content.
Fertile eggs are round and white when laid. You can see a pink spot through the membrane on top which marks the location of the embryo. This is what must be kept facing up. Infertile eggs are much smaller, have no visible networks of veins, andhave a yellowish cast instead of a pinkish cast when candled. My girl Tatty is beginnning to plump up with a second clutch after laying her first clutch on November 30, 2008. The eggs in my incubator have doubled in size since they were laid. I may try to photograph a candled fertile egg so everyone can see it.
Good Luck!
Tatty