After a year and a half of trying to make it happen, I finally succeeded in acquiring a bunch of Geochelone pardalis pardalis. (Note to Mr. Scientist, I am aware that YOU recently decided to change the genus name of this species. However, I've been using the "old", perfectly good name for 20 years, and prefer it. If YOUR new name holds up for 20 years, maybe, I'll consider changing. Such a shame that you spent your time and resources fixing something that ain't broke, instead of on something useful like figuring out what hatchlings do for their first year in the wild or solving the pyramiding mystery for us all... end rant.)
Anyhow, I was able to get 36 of these beautiful little hatchlings and share some of them with several forum members. I'm keeping around 10, or so, and the rest have all gone to good homes. This presents an amazing learning opportunity for us all. We know the source, the hatch date (within a few days), precisely how they were cared for in their first few days and weeks, what they were fed, etc... Since they've all been shipped off to different parts of the states, and we'll all do things a little differently, the whole world can watch them grow up and see what works best for their area. A tremendous amount of info will be able to be extrapolated from all of this. It can be one giant "End of Pyramiding" thread for us all to share. I really loved each and every one of these little guys and it was really difficult to decide which ones to part with. It ended up being pretty arbitrary as they were all cherry picked by me in the first place. I'm really looking forward to getting to watch so many of them grow up, with regular updates.
They all hatched between mid-August and the first week of September. All weighed 32-36 grams when I got them. They are all between 60-80 grams now. They are from several different clutches in several different pens, so they are also different ages and sizes. I tried to go get them right after they hatched, so most of them were in my care and receiving the "wet" routine within days of hatching. Next to hatching them myself, this has been about as close to a perfect situation as I could get.
Here's a few current pics of mine to get things started:
Anyhow, I was able to get 36 of these beautiful little hatchlings and share some of them with several forum members. I'm keeping around 10, or so, and the rest have all gone to good homes. This presents an amazing learning opportunity for us all. We know the source, the hatch date (within a few days), precisely how they were cared for in their first few days and weeks, what they were fed, etc... Since they've all been shipped off to different parts of the states, and we'll all do things a little differently, the whole world can watch them grow up and see what works best for their area. A tremendous amount of info will be able to be extrapolated from all of this. It can be one giant "End of Pyramiding" thread for us all to share. I really loved each and every one of these little guys and it was really difficult to decide which ones to part with. It ended up being pretty arbitrary as they were all cherry picked by me in the first place. I'm really looking forward to getting to watch so many of them grow up, with regular updates.
They all hatched between mid-August and the first week of September. All weighed 32-36 grams when I got them. They are all between 60-80 grams now. They are from several different clutches in several different pens, so they are also different ages and sizes. I tried to go get them right after they hatched, so most of them were in my care and receiving the "wet" routine within days of hatching. Next to hatching them myself, this has been about as close to a perfect situation as I could get.
Here's a few current pics of mine to get things started: