I don't deliberately cool mine. Heating regime is the same throughout the year, but in the cooler months as the temperature naturally drops mine tend to slow down and eventually go into aestivation, which is when I turn their lights off. The adults have already started to slow down now for me. The only thing I keep on is the heat mat, but I'm not sure that even that is necessary.
I make sure they are in good condition and eventually they become disinterested and food as they are getting ready to aestivate. Its not good to force them to eat beforehand, as I have heard they can die from food rotting in the stomach. When the temperature heats up again, I turn their heating back on to encourage them to come out of aestivation.
After this really its just a waiting game. If you have a male and a female, the male will head bob quite violently and eventually they will mate if the female is receptive. During the breeding season because they are so metabolically active, I tend to feed my dragons everyday with livefeed and salad, especially the female. If successful, you will notice the female getting larger and you should keep up the increased feed intake so that she does not expend all her energy into the eggs. I also supplemented her with Calcium Sandoz when she was gravid.
As laying draws near you will notice that she will begin digging and trying to find a suitable site to lay her eggs. At this stage I put in a deep container (about 30cm deep) of damp sand for her to lay in. Eventually she layed, at the bottom of the container, and after she was done I very very carefully dug out the eggs and transferred them to my incubator. One very important thing to remember is that you cannot turn the eggs so when transferring you must make sure they remain in the same position as they were in the clutch.
The eggs were incubated in a homemade esky incubator in takeaway containers. I used a water/vermiculate mixture as the substrate. Then the waiting game and eventually after 52 days of incubation at 29C I welcomed into the world my very first clutch
I used this method and achieved two clutches with a 100% hatch rate and no deformities.
