Reproductive efficiency of the American alligator depends an several factors:  age the female begins lay; duration of the reproductive life; number of nests laid; number of fertile eggs laid; number of embryonic deaths; number of eggs destroyed.  Investigation showed that there is a marked difference in. the causes of lowered reproductive efficiency in wild alligators as opposed to captive-reared alligators.  Decreased reproductive efficiency in the wild alligator is usually caused by predation of the nest, flood or environmental factors which cause inadequate conditions for incubation of the eggs.  Low reproductive efficiency was found to be a world wide problem for captive crocodilians and was particularly severe for the older farms.  Since many of the crocodilian farms collect and artificially incubate the eggs it was apparent that other factors are responsible for a low reproductive efficiency of captive alligators.

The cause of low reproductive efficiency was studied for 4 breeding seasons (1979, 80, 81 and 82) on an old (32 years) farm in Florida.  The study included 220 nests and 7886 eggs. The number of eggs hatched was 1028 (13% of the eggs laid). Eight % (623) of the eggs laid were broken but the major causes of the small hatch were infertility (2404 infertile eggs, 31%) and embryonic deaths (3831 embryos, 49%).  The percentage of eggs laid in captive nests which were infertile was 2.4 times the number of infertile eggs found in control eggs taken from nests in the wild.  The percentage of embryonic deaths that occurred in eggs laid by captive alligators was 2.7 times the percentage found for control eggs taken from wild nests.