Hi all,
I am new to the Tortoise Forum in general but an old timer in chelonia. I am a newb however with Testudo and have been following this thread and soaking up as much info as possible.

I had the opportunity to obtain a small group of Graeca subadults and want to seek input from Dan and others on their potential locality. I've scoured most of the reading material referenced here but feel my skills are not quite yet honed in.

I keep a number of tort species and I am looking to captive breed Graeca but certainly want to be sensitive to the many sub types that may be represented in the group. Of course they all came in together but I know this means little in regards to where they started their journeys.

I'll post a series of consecutive photos and solicite your input.

Great to meet you all.

Regards,

Paul Rattay
Northern California

This post was last modified: 04-17-2008 12:01 PM by rattboy.

*They were just soaked so some of them defacated.

I couldn't get the img embedding to work from picasa.

The animals in order:
M1 - Yellow Shell / Orange Tinted skin
M2 - Yellow Shell with some light brown / Yellow skin
F1 - Yellow Shell with some brown / Yellow skin
F2 - Higher Contrast - Darker / Some yellow skin but darker mask

The first three animals have no real masking so I assume they are just yellow variety of ibera from Jordan/Israel? Not sure about the orange male.

Thanks for your input.

Paul

http://picasaweb.google.com/paul.rattay/...3229631810

This post was last modified: 04-17-2008 12:21 PM by rattboy.

Figured out the posting.

M1 - Orange Male

M2 - Yellow with some light brown contrast

This post was last modified: 04-17-2008 01:18 PM by rattboy.

F1 Yellow with some brown contrast

F2 - darker contrast with some dark masking

Hello, welcome to the forum. Nice looking little tort family you have.

Hi Paul,
Male 1 is a Golden greek, T.g.terrestris. He's the smaller variety, more elongated, more orange in the shell and skin, dark moustache.

Male 2 is a Golden greek, T.g.terrestris. He's the larger variety, lighter colored, more yellow in the carapace, light moustache.

Female 1 is possibly a pure T.g.antakyensis or an antakyensis/terrestris cross.

Female 2 is a light colored Jordanian greek, T.g.ssp

Danny

Thanks for the welcome and for the input from Dan. In the case of the possible cross, would you keep the animals together or attempt to keep terrestris pure from a group management perspective?

I look forward to learning more and sharing information.

Paul

Welcome to the forum - nice looking group!