# Whoo hoo!!



## Yvonne G (Nov 11, 2018)

I'll bet you're never going to guess what this is:




I'm still in the process of my morning outside duties, so don't have time right now to be on the computer, but I'll give you all ONE clue - these are ground hatched babies. @Will ???


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## wellington (Nov 11, 2018)

It's a picture of baby tortoises or box turtles soaking


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## Tom (Nov 11, 2018)

Leopards?


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## Yvonne G (Nov 11, 2018)

[email protected] Barb wins the prize.

What it is is a pretty big disappointment. I got two SA leopards from Tom in 2018, ended up being male and female. . The female has been laying eggs this year, and none of them were fertile. I sent them through the diapause, but when I was ready to put them into the incubator, you could tell they were all clear.

Throughout the summer I saw many test holes in their yard, but no eggs. This a.m. I was walking through the gate to pick up poop in their yard and I spotted a hole in the ground. This is a picture of it AFTER I started digging around in it.




When you first see an untouched egg hole that's hatching, it's clean, smooth dirt all around with no loose dirt, and a clean-edged hole in the ground. So I put my finger down into the hole and felt a little rock in there. I got my trusty nest digging spoon and started to excavate the hole. The picture above in the first post is what I first took out of the nest.

Later I went back to the nest and started digging around again. The soil on my property is heavy clay. It's hard as a rock when dry, and like quick sand when wet. So after it's been watered, it packs down pretty hard. The eggs towards the top were able to hatch and move around in the dirt, but most of the eggs that were in the bottom were either rotten or dead because the dirt was hard as rock. But I did find six live babies altogether and three eggs that may or may not hatch. 




(Needless to say, I'm keeping "Zipper", the one top right.)

The nest must have been open for a while because the dead, stinkin' babies called to flies, and there were some pretty big maggots in the bottom of the nest.

I started this tale saying, "What it is is a pretty big disappointment." What I mean by that is I'm doubtful my SA leopard pair is truly SA. I'm thinking one or both of them may be "mutts." Because these babies don't have speckled skin, and don't have spots in the scutes. @Tom - did the SA babies that you hatched have the SA characteristics?

At any rate, the female is only a little over eight years of age, and she's bigger than my 20 some odd year babcocks. The male is about half her size.


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## Tom (Nov 11, 2018)

Yvonne G said:


> I started this tale saying, "What it is is a pretty big disappointment." What I mean by that is I'm doubtful my SA leopard pair is truly SA. I'm thinking one or both of them may be "mutts." Because these babies don't have speckled skin, and don't have spots in the scutes. @Tom - did the SA babies that you hatched have the SA characteristics?
> 
> At any rate, the female is only a little over eight years of age, and she's bigger than my 20 some odd year babcocks. The male is about half her size.



How does Barb win the prize? I correctly identified the species!

There is absolutely no chance that the two you got from me are not both 100% SA leopards. All of the babies I've hatched have been obviously 100% SA leopard too. Your babies there are obvious mixes. Were you not housing all your leopards together? That is what I remember anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't your regular leopard male have access to the female at some point? Or the SA male in with the regular females?

The eggs might have been fertile, but no one has good results artificially hatching this species. In my first two years I successfully incubated only 18 out of over 200 eggs. Last year I had about 120 eggs and only 8 babies hatched. Here is the shocker: I missed one nest last year. One of them laid eggs and covered up the hole without me seeing it. Clutches are typically 8-12 eggs. I had seven babies hatch in the ground from one clutch. It really demonstrated how dismally I've been failing with my artificial incubation and reaffirms what I've always heard which is hatch rates are better if you just leave them in the ground. This year they've put about 15 clutches in the ground. All over in the same area. I've left all of the eggs in the ground and I'm going to block off that whole area in the next couple of weeks. All those eggs will stay in the ground and they won't begin to incubate and develop until summer of 2019. In spring/summer of 2019, the females will have to lay outside the area where they laid eggs this year.


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## Relic (Nov 11, 2018)

Finding previously unknown nests is always a trip. I had a three-toed caught nesting late one night and I never got around to digging up the eggs. A couple of months later I just happened onto the nest as the first little guy started peeking out. Fun times...


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## Yvonne G (Nov 11, 2018)

Tom said:


> How does Barb win the prize? I correctly identified the species!
> 
> There is absolutely no chance that the two you got from me are not both 100% SA leopards. All of the babies I've hatched have been obviously 100% SA leopard too. Your babies there are obvious mixes. Were you not housing all your leopards together? That is what I remember anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't your regular leopard male have access to the female at some point? Or the SA male in with the regular females?
> 
> The eggs might have been fertile, but no one has good results artificially hatching this species. In my first two years I successfully incubated only 18 out of over 200 eggs. Last year I had about 120 eggs and only 8 babies hatched. Here is the shocker: I missed one nest last year. One of them laid eggs and covered up the hole without me seeing it. Clutches are typically 8-12 eggs. I had seven babies hatch in the ground from one clutch. It really demonstrated how dismally I've been failing with my artificial incubation and reaffirms what I've always heard which is hatch rates are better if you just leave them in the ground. This year they've put about 15 clutches in the ground. All over in the same area. I've left all of the eggs in the ground and I'm going to block off that whole area in the next couple of weeks. All those eggs will stay in the ground and they won't begin to incubate and develop until summer of 2019. In spring/summer of 2019, the females will have to lay outside the area where they laid eggs this year.


Yes, I kept all my leopards together prior to the sexual maturity of of the SAs. But they've been separated now for a couple years. Do you think it's a case of retained sperm?


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## Tom (Nov 11, 2018)

Yvonne G said:


> Yes, I kept all my leopards together prior to the sexual maturity of of the SAs. But they've been separated now for a couple years. Do you think it's a case of retained sperm?


Seems the most likely to me. Ours are all the same age from the same batch and this is my third year getting eggs.


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## Yvonne G (Nov 12, 2018)

I wouldn't have thought it possible. She laid 7 clutches of eggs AFTER the two types of leopard were separated. So with 7 clutches she didn't get rid of all the sperm? It really seems unlikely, but the only thing possible.


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## Kapidolo Farms (Nov 12, 2018)

A day late to the guess and much wishful thinking, Radiateds.


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## Yvonne G (Nov 12, 2018)

Will said:


> A day late to the guess and much wishful thinking, Radiateds.


Yeah, right! When did you slip a male into our group?


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## Yvonne G (Nov 12, 2018)

Well, now I'm I'm trying to remember if the babcocks ever inhabited that new SA yard when it was first opened. Sometimes a cloudy memory is a benefit, and sometimes it is pretty disgusting. Heck. I thought I had SA's hatching, and they're only babcocks. Not too disappointing though, as they're every bit as fun and pretty!

I'm thinking if they were a mix between SA and babcock there would be at least SOME characteristics on SOME of the babies. So now I'm going with full babcock.

But Tommy (as my 2010 SA leopard is named) has been alone in her yard with only SA's now for two plus years, so if I see any more nests out in that yard, they have to be hers, and they have to be SA's! So there, pft-t-t-t-t!


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## wellington (Nov 12, 2018)

Pft? Are you Pft-Ing us lol. 
Mixed or not still a nice find.


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## wellington (Nov 12, 2018)

Tom said:


> How does Barb win the prize? I correctly identified the species!
> 
> There is absolutely no chance that the two you got from me are not both 100% SA leopards. All of the babies I've hatched have been obviously 100% SA leopard too. Your babies there are obvious mixes. Were you not housing all your leopards together? That is what I remember anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't your regular leopard male have access to the female at some point? Or the SA male in with the regular females?
> 
> The eggs might have been fertile, but no one has good results artificially hatching this species. In my first two years I successfully incubated only 18 out of over 200 eggs. Last year I had about 120 eggs and only 8 babies hatched. Here is the shocker: I missed one nest last year. One of them laid eggs and covered up the hole without me seeing it. Clutches are typically 8-12 eggs. I had seven babies hatch in the ground from one clutch. It really demonstrated how dismally I've been failing with my artificial incubation and reaffirms what I've always heard which is hatch rates are better if you just leave them in the ground. This year they've put about 15 clutches in the ground. All over in the same area. I've left all of the eggs in the ground and I'm going to block off that whole area in the next couple of weeks. All those eggs will stay in the ground and they won't begin to incubate and develop until summer of 2019. In spring/summer of 2019, the females will have to lay outside the area where they laid eggs this year.


I guessed right. She didn't ask what species is this


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## surfergirl (Nov 12, 2018)

Those babies are beautiful! Cool that they just hatched out of the California soil!


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