Burmese Mountain Tortoise (and it's little cousin)

[Itort]

Who out there has any of the Manouri tortoises?

[emysemys]

You decided to start a new thread, huh?

In answer to your question, I have 1.1 Manouria emys emys and 1.3 Manouria emys phayerei. I had an accidental mating and successful breeding between the two species about 11 years ago and I now have 6 male intergrades about 10 years old or so. Since I have separated the two groups, I have nest building every year, but no luck with hatching any of the eggs so far. I always have my fingers crossed that this is going to be the year!

Yvonne

[Itort]

Do your females show the nest guarding behavior? I find this guys fascinating.

[egyptiandan]

How are you incubating your eggs Yvonne?

Danny

[emysemys]

The Mep:

I have one 65lb female, long term captive but wild caught who builds nice nest mounds, a younger cb female who has only been building nests the past two seasons and one young Vic Morgan female not yet building nests.
The large female is about 20lbs heavier than the male. I've thought he wasn't big enough to actually "make contact" with that large female, and have been thinking that her eggs are not fertile. She builds a nice nest mound, then guards it for a couple days. When she's finished guarding, or when she gets off to eat or whatever, I dig out the eggs and put them into my Little Giant bird egg brooder. I have it set at 86 degrees and the eggs are placed on a bed of moist cypress mulch. They usually start to grow mold withing a few days. The other female that lays eggs just poops them out all over the enclosure. I still gather them up and incubate them, but they also grow mold within just a few days.

The Mee:

The female Mee is the mother of the intergrade babies. She is about 30lbs and at the time she was bred, the male Mep was about 25lbs. When I had to separate the two groups, I was able to find a young male Mee, and even though he "practices" all the time, he's way to small for the female. So until he does some growing, there won't be any eggs from this female.

Yvonne

[egyptiandan]

Hi Yvonne
It sounds like your getting the mold from the mulch and maybe to damp conditions in the incubator.
Next time you get eggs try using perlite or "glitter grade" vermiculite. Make either slightly damp and have a large water dish in the incubator for air humidity. To much water is just as harmful as to little water to eggs. I would try to keep the air humidity around 80%.
Hopefully you'll have better luck the next time you get eggs.

Danny

[emysemys]

I'm sorry...I didn't give you enough information: I put the eggs in individual plastic frozen meal dishes, and there are leopard eggs, box turtle eggs, yellowfoot eggs and occasionally russian tortoise eggs in the same incubator. The only eggs that grow mold are the Manouria eggs. I have used other mediums in the past, vermiculite, perlite, potting soil, paper towells, experimenting quite a bit and liking the cypress mulch best. 11 years ago when I had the successful hatch I was using no medium...just placed the eggs on the bare plastic. Maybe I should try that this year with the Burmese eggs. I've been trying to incubate Manouria eggs for the past 10 or 11 year with the same results no matter what medium I've been using at the time. One year I even pulled the nest material into the incubator with the same moldy results.

Yvonne

[egyptiandan]

Hi Yvonne,
Are you covering the containers that you keep the eggs in? Try this this year, which goes with the no medium. Use perlite or vermiculite, but leave it dry. Don't cover the container. Just the air humidity should be fine.
I try to incubate my eggs that need a lot of humidity seperately from the ones that don't. You might want to try the box turtle and yellowfoot eggs seperately.

Danny

[emysemys]

Thanks for your "words of wisdom," Dan:

I'll try it your way this year. I have had much success with all the other eggs I've incubated, hatching successfully yellow foot babies in the same incubator as leopard babies. I do have several incubators and I can put the eggs that require more humidity in their own incubator. In fact I've had so much success with the leopard eggs in a humid incubator that I've had to start chopping them up with the shovel in the nests. There just aren't that many people that want leopard babies. To answer your question, no, I don't cover the individual containers. When they first start out, I lay a moist paper towell over each container, but after a couple weeks I remove that and the eggs are open to the air. I started doing that when I noticed the indentation that, to me, meant the eggs weren't moist enough.

Thanks again..I appreciate your input.

Yvonne

[egyptiandan]

Your very welcome I'm glad your having success with all your other eggs. I can imagine you'd have to do that with the leopard eggs and always to bad to have to do that. I just wish more people did that with their sulcata eggs.
I do my box turtle eggs in containers with the lid on. I put about 6 holes in the lid with a hole punch. I make sure the vermiculite is damp but not wet. I don't add any water till about day 40, that way the eggs don't get over wet and suck up to much water.

Danny