# Exploding Eggs (Hermann’s)



## amrkizer (Nov 17, 2019)

Hello. 

I have two tortoises, a 6 year old male and an (approx.) 8 year old female. They have mated (many times) and the female has dug nests and laid 3 batches of 4-5 eggs over the past couple of years. I have been trying to hatch them, have purchased three different incubators and done tons of research and talked to people at reptile stores and everything I can think of, but I cannot get the eggs to hatch. I honestly don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, but every single batch after about 6 weeks, the eggs begin exploding. 

At this point I am starting to wonder if maybe there is something wrong with the tortoises? They both appear to be active and healthy and have never had any kind of medical problems. I’m getting so frustrated and don’t know what else I can do! Does anyone have any ideas on what could be wrong or what I can do to get the eggs to hatch next time? Just threw out the last of the 5 eggs she laid about 4 weeks ago because they were rotting .

(Using a Hovabator with Hatchrite at 86-88 degrees and 70-80% humidity. Carefully removed eggs minutes after they were laid and put into incubator without turning them and have not touched them since.)


----------



## method89 (Nov 18, 2019)

if he's available, @HermanniChris probably has the answer.


----------



## daniellenc (Nov 18, 2019)

Hmmmm usually only fertile eggs explode when something goes wrong, but your female may just need more time to lay fertile eggs and they're duds. Could also be temp fluctuations you're missing.


----------



## Yvonne G (Nov 18, 2019)

Do you have too much water in the incubator? Too much water causes the eggs to absorb too much and they swell and sometimes crack open.


----------



## Markw84 (Nov 18, 2019)

Perhaps you can go through your procedure exactly - how you take the eggs from the nest to incubator. How do you prepare the incubation medium? What are you using for a container and incubation medium? Do you wash the eggs? Any ventilation in the container? What type thermometer/hygrometer are you using, Etc.


----------



## Gijoux (Nov 20, 2019)

amrkizer said:


> Hello.
> 
> I have two tortoises, a 6 year old male and an (approx.) 8 year old female. They have mated (many times) and the female has dug nests and laid 3 batches of 4-5 eggs over the past couple of years. I have been trying to hatch them, have purchased three different incubators and done tons of research and talked to people at reptile stores and everything I can think of, but I cannot get the eggs to hatch. I honestly don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, but every single batch after about 6 weeks, the eggs begin exploding.
> 
> ...


I'm guessing perhaps you don't have enough ventilation in your boxes, but of course no way to know. I've had eggs incubating for months and months and months and months without explosion or babies until my Leopard's 4th clutch, at which point I got some fertile eggs and babies. I had been told to leave the eggs in the incubator until they hatch or explode. It sounds like you've got the exploding egg scenario down. I hope someone has more ideas.


----------



## Tom (Nov 21, 2019)

Eggs pop when they are too wet. Instead of hatchrite, mix up your own vermiculite. I do one to one water to vermiculite, by weight, for the species I incubate, but Russian tortoises need no added moisture to the media as long as the air is humid in the incubator. I would guess that hermanni would be somewhere in the middle.

Someone with first hand success hatching hermanni should advise you on how damp to make the media. @TylerStewart has hatched many hermanni.


----------



## TylerStewart (Nov 25, 2019)

Tom said:


> Eggs pop when they are too wet. Instead of hatchrite, mix up your own vermiculite. I do one to one water to vermiculite, by weight, for the species I incubate, but Russian tortoises need no added moisture to the media as long as the air is humid in the incubator. I would guess that hermanni would be somewhere in the middle.
> 
> Someone with first hand success hatching hermanni should advise you on how damp to make the media. @TylerStewart has hatched many hermanni.


We do about 60% water weight ratio to dry vermiculite (600g water to 1000g vermiculite, for example). A lot of our hermanns hatch out of the ground, however, and aren't in a controlled incubation by us. They should hatch around 65 days (temps in the 85-89 range), but after about 80-90 days, bad eggs will sometimes pop. I separate older eggs from still viable eggs after about 75 days so that they don't spoil good eggs, if they pop. For me, if hermanns haven't hatched by about 90 days, they're almost always bad eggs; infertile or just died in development. I don't spend any time candling eggs and stressing about it, they'll hatch or they won't. Candling them doesn't change anything, and debatably the extra handling of the eggs only increases risks of messing them up.


----------



## HermanniChris (Nov 27, 2019)

I apologize for the delays in getting to the posts I’ve been tagged in but ever since the TFO app went down, I haven’t been able to see the tags without thinking to log in via the web. I’ll do my best to get to all.

Regarding this situation:

Are you sure your eggs are fertile? I ask because typically infertile eggs will be the ones to actually burst or explode after some time. They can sit and look good for weeks and weeks, even months, before erupting one day. Fertile eggs usually crack from overly moist conditions and begin to expose seeping blood and discharge first. 

Any Testudo egg is sensitive to overly moist elements so we typically keep them on the drier side with higher air humidity. We use both industrial incubators and simple hovabators. We also successfully hatch several Hermann’s in the ground naturally here in southern, coastal New Jersey. They are rather hardy eggs so long as moisture doesn’t get out of control for long. 

Safe incubation temperatures range from 82 to upwards of nearly 92F especially for the western subspecies. Mostly males are produced below 88.6F and the pivotal degree to yield females entirely is as high as 91.6F for the western subspecies and 89.8F for the eastern subspecies, respectively. 

It truly sounds as though your eggs may not actually be fertile to begin with and at only 8 years of age, your female simply may not be producing fertile clutches just yet. Conditions concerning oviposition and actual, fertile ova vary between individuals and while some female Hermann’s may show success at as young as 5, most do not. 

I made a video regarding incubation and hatching of Hermann’s tortoises some years back. It’s not top quality but it holds good info with plenty of proof of success. It can be viewed here: 




In addition to all this, I do have an extensive website dedicated to everything concerning Hermann’s tortoises and other members of the genus Testudo. Please, do use it and never hesitate to reach out directly with any and all questions.
The site is: HermanniHaven.com


----------



## ZEROPILOT (Dec 4, 2019)

I think that @Josh should consider an EXPLODED EGG badge for those of us that have been slimed.


----------

