Temperature Sexing Radiated Tortoises

mrnewberry

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I was wondering how successful breeders are with temperature sexing this species? Anybody care to share their experiences or insights?
 

mrnewberry

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In my experience (45+ years), TSD is relatively unreliable in Radiated Tortoises.

Do you have a guess as to how reliable? I am more familiar with Burmese star tortoises. With them it seems that when incubated for male they generally end up male. But, when incubated for female they get maybe 50% female, or worse. (Although, that wasn’t my experience.)
 

zovick

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Do you have a guess as to how reliable? I am more familiar with Burmese star tortoises. With them it seems that when incubated for male they generally end up male. But, when incubated for female they get maybe 50% female, or worse. (Although, that wasn’t my experience.)
I would say that TSD is about 60% reliable in Radiateds. However, it is 99% to 100% reliable in both Burmese and Sri Lankan Stars. I am not sure where your info on the Stars was gleaned, but those people who are not having the rate of success with TSD which I noted are most probably doing something wrong. I hatched close to 500 Stars (Burmese and Sri Lankans combined) and I am not aware of more than 5 or 6 (if even that many) which did not turn out to be the expected sexes.
 

mrnewberry

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I would say that TSD is about 60% reliable in Radiateds. However, it is 99% to 100% reliable in both Burmese and Sri Lankan Stars. I am not sure where your info on the Stars was gleaned, but those people who are not having the rate of success with TSD which I noted are most probably doing something wrong. I hatched close to 500 Stars (Burmese and Sri Lankans combined) and I am not aware of more than 5 or 6 (if even that many) which did not turn out to be the expected sexes.

Thank you for the information. I really do appreciate it. As far as to where I was hearing about poor success rates on TSD with platynota there is a thread here on the forum discussing it as well as discussions with other keepers. The few that I have raised up large enough to determine sex so far have been what they were incubated for.
 
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