Manouria emys emys nesting

Yvonne G

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I have a young pair of Manouria emys emys:

Female-Rajkumar, 35lbs:

Manouria emys emys Rajkumar 7-18-20.jpg

and Duc - 19lbs:

Manouria emys emys Duc 7-18-20 a.jpg

Raj, as I call her, started nesting in August of 2016. The first nest was "built", if you can call it that, out in the open on bare ground, and I didn't see her nesting until she had destroyed all the eggs. She scraped dirt, and scraped dirt, then deposited her eggs on the bare ground, then scraped more dirt, breaking all the eggs n the process. It was past dusk when I discovered her, so the picture is pretty dark. But you can barely see her at the base of the tree, with a small pile of debris behind her:

Manouria nesting 8-19-16 a.jpg

This is what the eggs looked like:

Manouria nesting 8-19-16 b.jpg

The next nesting took place on July 30th, 2018, and she decided the waterer (with water in it!!!) would be a pretty good place to build her nest:

Manouria nesting 7-30-18 a.jpgManouria nesting 7-30-18 c.jpg

This is the nest after she was finished with it (full of dirt):

Manouria nesting 7-30-18 b.jpg

I don't remember her building a nest last year, but it could just be that I didn't take any pictures. At any rate, if she did, it was a failure - actually, I DO remember having Manouria eggs in the incubator last year, so she must have built a nice nest. (old age memory)

This year she's building her nest inside the night house. I went in there this a.m. to start taking down all the electrical off the wall so I could mount it all on a back board and clean it up, and I noticed all this scraping on the rubber mat (I didn't think to take the picture prior to dumping leaves in there for her, so disregard the leaves at this point of the narative, as the floor is totally bare. Pretty interesting scraping pattern, no?:

Manouria nesting 7-18-20 a.jpg

So I went and got her a big bushel basket of leaves and dumped it for her, and when I went out a few minutes later with the scale to weigh them, she was already scraping them into a nice pile.

Hopefully this will be the year for emys emys egg success!!
 
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Yvonne G

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Here's the result so far, after the whole day of nest building:

Manouria nesting 7-18-20 b.jpg

She's squeezed it in between the night box and the wall. She's now sleeping but she'll be up and at 'em bright and early, so I'll give her another bushel basket of leaves first thing in the a.m.
 

Yvonne G

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When I went out to do my a.m. chores I took my camera with me and she has her head down into the pile, but she looked up when she heard me. Her head was totally buried. . I THINK the next step is that she'll lay eggs:

Manouria nesting 7-18-20 c.jpg
 

Yvonne G

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Success! When I went out this a.m. to feed and water, the female was headed into the night house, leaving the nest. I knelt down to paw through the leaves, and she immediately came out of the night house and started to attack me. Manouria guard the nest for a few days after laying eggs. So I put her out in front of the food and started looking for eggs:

Manouria nesting 7-18-20 d.jpg

Whoo Hoo!!! Let's hope Duc was up for the job, because this is a perfect nest, nice and moist in the nest chamber, and 33 good-looking eggs!

Manouria nesting 7-18-20 e.jpg
 

Hutsie B

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Holy croly, that is a lot of eggs, congratulations! Keep us posted on hatching them.
 

Cathie G

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I have a young pair of Manouria emys emys:

Female-Rajkumar, 35lbs:

View attachment 300346

and Duc - 19lbs:

View attachment 300345

Raj, as I call her, started nesting in August of 2016. The first nest was "built", if you can call it that, out in the open on bare ground, and I didn't see her nesting until she had destroyed all the eggs. She scraped dirt, and scraped dirt, then deposited her eggs on the bare ground, then scraped more dirt, breaking all the eggs n the process. It was past dusk when I discovered her, so the picture is pretty dark. But you can barely see her at the base of the tree, with a small pile of debris behind her:

View attachment 300351

This is what the eggs looked like:

View attachment 300352

The next nesting took place on July 30th, 2018, and she decided the waterer (with water in it!!!) would be a pretty good place to build her nest:

View attachment 300348View attachment 300350

This is the nest after she was finished with it (full of dirt):

View attachment 300349

I don't remember her building a nest last year, but it could just be that I didn't take any pictures. At any rate, if she did, it was a failure - actually, I DO remember having Manouria eggs in the incubator last year, so she must have built a nice nest. (old age memory)

This year she's building her nest inside the night house. I went in there this a.m. to start taking down all the electrical off the wall so I could mount it all on a back board and clean it up, and I noticed all this scraping on the rubber mat (I didn't think to take the picture prior to dumping leaves in there for her, so disregard the leaves at this point of the narative, as the floor is totally bare. Pretty interesting scraping pattern, no?:

View attachment 300347

So I went and got her a big bushel basket of leaves and dumped it for her, and when I went out a few minutes later with the scale to weigh them, she was already scraping them into a nice pile.

Hopefully this will be the year for emys emys egg success!!
Fingers crossed.?
 

Toddrickfl1

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Success! When I went out this a.m. to feed and water, the female was headed into the night house, leaving the nest. I knelt down to paw through the leaves, and she immediately came out of the night house and started to attack me. Manouria guard the nest for a few days after laying eggs. So I put her out in front of the food and started looking for eggs:

View attachment 300580

Whoo Hoo!!! Let's hope Duc was up for the job, because this is a perfect nest, nice and moist in the nest chamber, and 33 good-looking eggs!

View attachment 300581
Super cool!
 

Gordon S

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Success! When I went out this a.m. to feed and water, the female was headed into the night house, leaving the nest. I knelt down to paw through the leaves, and she immediately came out of the night house and started to attack me. Manouria guard the nest for a few days after laying eggs. So I put her out in front of the food and started looking for eggs:

View attachment 300580

Whoo Hoo!!! Let's hope Duc was up for the job, because this is a perfect nest, nice and moist in the nest chamber, and 33 good-looking eggs!

View attachment 300581
Not bad Yvonne.
I have been keeping things quiet as I didn't want to jinx things.
All three of my females laid for the first time this year and a total of 133 eggs were laid with 18 broken.
I wasn't expecting any fertile but when I candled them 110 were fertile and showing embryos which if they all hatch I have no idea what I'm going to do.
 
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