Interesting experiences with Leopard tortoises

Just to explain what I mean by aberrant - a normal leopard tortoise has 13 main scutes.
5 across the back and 4 on each side. For ease of reference I number them 1 to 5 across the back, 6 to 9 on the left side and 10 to 13 on the right side numbering from the head side to the tail and viewing the tortoise from above with the head at 12 o'clock.
In this example there is an "extra" scute between scute 2 and 3.

12 o'clock.

I don't have one but a lot of members do.

They are common here. I believe there is a genetic component based on my experience with this species. Here is a batch with missing scutes, crooked scutes and extra scutes.

Tom said:

They are common here. I believe there is a genetic component based on my experience with this species. Here is a batch with missing scutes, crooked scutes and extra scutes.
View attachment 272925

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Tom, What a lovely collection.Are these all your hatchlings and how many hatchlings were there in total - ie more or less what percentage are these of the total?
I notice that they are all fairly dark.
This little one took it to the extreme.



Do you have any experience with hypomelanistic specimens?

Mellivora said:

Tom, What a lovely collection.Are these all your hatchlings and how many hatchlings were there in total - ie more or less what percentage are these of the total?
I notice that they are all fairly dark.
This little one took it to the extreme.Do you have any experience with hypomelanistic specimens?

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My first year I hatched 10. Last year I hatched 8, and another 8 hatched out of the ground from a nest that I missed. No one over here seems to know how to successfully incubate them artificially. They seem to hatch out very well all on their own if we leave them in the ground. This past year would have been my third year getting eggs, but I decided to leave all of them in the ground. There are about 18 nests in the ground. My girls lay from May to November, so some of those eggs have already been in the ground for one year, and they should all start hatching toward the end of summer here in September or October. This is how the guy that I bought mine from has done it for more than two decades.

The female that produced those babies has a crooked scute herself, and roughly a third of her babies have scute anomalies. Because of the dismal failure rate with artificial incubation here, I don't know if the scutes are aberrant because of genetics, or because we are using incorrect incubation temps. I suspect both. This year I will also be digging up a few clutches for experimentation. Three experiments this year: 1. Leave them in the ground and don't mess with them at all. 2. Leave them in the ground over winter for diapause, and them dig them up in spring, put them in a regular incubator, and see how they do. 3. Leave them in the ground over winter, dig them up in spring, and put them in an incubator with a night temp drop programmed in. Number 3 seems to be the best of both worlds, and I expect this method to do well for me.

I've never seen or produced any hypomelanistic SA leopards.

I'll have some answers by November or December.

I have a couple leopards with aberrant scutes (that I hatched here )



They are both from the same female and none of the rest of the clutches were aberrant

My female sulcata has one small extra scute on her back . She produced about 100 egg since year 2015. I noticed that if the incubating temperature were over 88F. I will have 3 out of 100 baby hatch out on 75 days with extra scute. But if I lower the temperature to 85f. The incubation time would be 85 days with no extra scute. And if they were hatch out from the ground(hatch out naturally), all baby’s were perfect scute.

Tom said:

My first year I hatched 10. Last year I hatched 8, and another 8 hatched out of the ground from a nest that I missed. No one over here seems to know how to successfully incubate them artificially. They seem to hatch out very well all on their own if we leave them in the ground. This past year would have been my third year getting eggs, but I decided to leave all of them in the ground. There are about 18 nests in the ground. My girls lay from May to November, so some of those eggs have already been in the ground for one year, and they should all start hatching toward the end of summer here in September or October. This is how the guy that I bought mine from has done it for more than two decades.

The female that produced those babies has a crooked scute herself, and roughly a third of her babies have scute anomalies. Because of the dismal failure rate with artificial incubation here, I don't know if the scutes are aberrant because of genetics, or because we are using incorrect incubation temps. I suspect both. This year I will also be digging up a few clutches for experimentation. Three experiments this year: 1. Leave them in the ground and don't mess with them at all. 2. Leave them in the ground over winter for diapause, and them dig them up in spring, put them in a regular incubator, and see how they do. 3. Leave them in the ground over winter, dig them up in spring, and put them in an incubator with a night temp drop programmed in. Number 3 seems to be the best of both worlds, and I expect this method to do well for me.

I've never seen or produced any hypomelanistic SA leopards.

I'll have some answers by November or December.

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Good luck with your experiments. I just suspect that there is one problem that you may encounter with artificial incubation and I hope I will be able to describe it sensibly.
When my females lay their eggs they stomp the soil down very tightly. In the egg the young ones are formed in a rounded way. When they incubate naturally they have to dig themselves out and the effort that they have to put into this exercise helps them to straighten out leaving them with a flat belly.
If one incubates artificially you may find that the belly does not flatten out properly (especially if you help them out of the shell) and these little guys tend to have a lower survival rate.
Looking forward to the results of your experiments.

Just as an aside, sometimes we make life difficult for ourselves by trying to create "ideal" circumstances.
More than 20 years ago a couple of house snakes that I kept as pets laid eggs for the first time.and not having the knowledge to artificially incubate them I took them to the local zoo. They showed me their incubation room where the whole room was kept at the "correct" temperature and humidity.
I questioned the "correctness" as I could not see that there would always be a place available in nature that would provide this "correct" environment day and night for a period of 60 days +.
The next year I was very busy and placed the eggs in a sealed (no holes) 2 litre plastic ice cream container on a damp paper towel on a book shelf with the intention of taking them to the zoo.
A coupleof times (3?) during the next 2 months I would notice the container and check the contents but never had the time to visit the zoo.
One day when I checked again I was amazed to find a whole batch of healthy baby snakes, 100% success and during the 2 months I never even added further moisture to the paper towel.
when r

Yvonne G said:

I have a couple leopards with aberrant scutes (that I hatched here )

View attachment 272955 View attachment 272957

They are both from the same female and none of the rest of the clutches were aberrant

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Yvonne the single one is awesome!
I have come across quite a number of abberations but this is the most interesting one that I have ever seen.
Are the two in the first pic from the same female?

Mellivora said:

Good luck with your experiments. I just suspect that there is one problem that you may encounter with artificial incubation and I hope I will be able to describe it sensibly.
When my females lay their eggs they stomp the soil down very tightly. In the egg the young ones are formed in a rounded way. When they incubate naturally they have to dig themselves out and the effort that they have to put into this exercise helps them to straighten out leaving them with a flat belly.
If one incubates artificially you may find that the belly does not flatten out properly (especially if you help them out of the shell) and these little guys tend to have a lower survival rate.
Looking forward to the results of your experiments.

Click to expand...

I hatch hundreds of baby tortoises a year of several species. Belly flatness has never been an issue with any of them. Their bellies flatten out nicely in their brooder boxes. Its been my observation that their bellies flatten out whenever they are on any flat surface. Also, there is some evidence that at least some species of tortoise hatch out and then remain underground in their nests for some period of time before digging up and out. In the case of sulcatas, they wait for a rainy day. Ground hatched leopards here also seem to sit underground for a time and eat their eggshells. The man who has been breeding them here since 1990 related to me that he has dug up many nests as the first hatchlings break through the surface and found little or no shells. He doesn't know how long they sit underground waiting after hatching or what prompts them to dig up and out. He does run sprinklers to dampen things if it has been dry with no rain at the time they should be coming up. This keeps the ground a little softer for them.

No difference between the ones that come out of the incubator and the ones that come out of the ground.

I've never helped one of of its egg. Never needed to.

Survival rate for the ones I incubate is 100%.

Mellivora said:

Yvonne the single one is awesome!
I have come across quite a number of abberations but this is the most interesting one that I have ever seen.
Are the two in the first pic from the same female?

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Actually from the SAME CLUTCH!!! The bigger one hatched a full two months before the rest of the clutch - same incubator, same temperature.

Tom said:

I hatch hundreds of baby tortoises a year of several species. Belly flatness has never been an issue with any of them. Their bellies flatten out nicely in their brooder boxes. Its been my observation that their bellies flatten out whenever they are on any flat surface. Also, there is some evidence that at least some species of tortoise hatch out and then remain underground in their nests for some period of time before digging up and out. In the case of sulcatas, they wait for a rainy day. Ground hatched leopards here also seem to sit underground for a time and eat their eggshells. The man who has been breeding them here since 1990 related to me that he has dug up many nests as the first hatchlings break through the surface and found little or no shells. He doesn't know how long they sit underground waiting after hatching or what prompts them to dig up and out. He does run sprinklers to dampen things if it has been dry with no rain at the time they should be coming up. This keeps the ground a little softer for them.

No difference between the ones that come out of the incubator and the ones that come out of the ground.

I've never helped one of of its egg. Never needed to.

Survival rate for the ones I incubate is 100%.

Click to expand...

Zipper, the single one in the second picture, is ground hatched. I found the nest in winter and most of the babies in the nest were dead. Zipper and, if I'm remembering correctly, two others were alive and very cold. But became active when they were soaked and warmed up.

Tom said:

I hatch hundreds of baby tortoises a year of several species. Belly flatness has never been an issue with any of them. Their bellies flatten out nicely in their brooder boxes. Its been my observation that their bellies flatten out whenever they are on any flat surface. Also, there is some evidence that at least some species of tortoise hatch out and then remain underground in their nests for some period of time before digging up and out. In the case of sulcatas, they wait for a rainy day. Ground hatched leopards here also seem to sit underground for a time and eat their eggshells. The man who has been breeding them here since 1990 related to me that he has dug up many nests as the first hatchlings break through the surface and found little or no shells. He doesn't know how long they sit underground waiting after hatching or what prompts them to dig up and out. He does run sprinklers to dampen things if it has been dry with no rain at the time they should be coming up. This keeps the ground a little softer for them.

No difference between the ones that come out of the incubator and the ones that come out of the ground.

I've never helped one of of its egg. Never needed to.

Survival rate for the ones I incubate is 100%.

Click to expand...

Tom, does the type of soil in an exclosure make a difference. I noticed Carol's soil in South Africa looks rather sandy. My soil is red clay and I have a very thick growth of many different grasses. My females take a minimum of 4 hours to dig their nests and another 4 to cover it up, often with my assistance to cut big roots and dig out cement pieces. Do you think babies could actually dig out of packed down clay under these circumstances?

Tom said:

My first year I hatched 10. Last year I hatched 8, and another 8 hatched out of the ground from a nest that I missed. No one over here seems to know how to successfully incubate them artificially. They seem to hatch out very well all on their own if we leave them in the ground. This past year would have been my third year getting eggs, but I decided to leave all of them in the ground. There are about 18 nests in the ground. My girls lay from May to November, so some of those eggs have already been in the ground for one year, and they should all start hatching toward the end of summer here in September or October. This is how the guy that I bought mine from has done it for more than two decades.

The female that produced those babies has a crooked scute herself, and roughly a third of her babies have scute anomalies. Because of the dismal failure rate with artificial incubation here, I don't know if the scutes are aberrant because of genetics, or because we are using incorrect incubation temps. I suspect both. This year I will also be digging up a few clutches for experimentation. Three experiments this year: 1. Leave them in the ground and don't mess with them at all. 2. Leave them in the ground over winter for diapause, and them dig them up in spring, put them in a regular incubator, and see how they do. 3. Leave them in the ground over winter, dig them up in spring, and put them in an incubator with a night temp drop programmed in. Number 3 seems to be the best of both worlds, and I expect this method to do well for me.

I've never seen or produced any hypomelanistic SA leopards.

I'll have some answers by November or December.

Click to expand...

I was wondering how your nests held up with our very wet winter. Have you dug up any of the nests yet for your experiment? What temperature have you decided for your night drop? It seems I recall someone on this forum suggested a 12 degree drop at night. How do you set up your incubator to automatically drop the temperature at night? I am very egg-cited to see how your experiments go this year.

Gijoux said:

Tom, does the type of soil in an exclosure make a difference. I noticed Carol's soil in South Africa looks rather sandy. My soil is red clay and I have a very thick growth of many different grasses. My females take a minimum of 4 hours to dig their nests and another 4 to cover it up, often with my assistance to cut big roots and dig out cement pieces. Do you think babies could actually dig out of packed down clay under these circumstances?

Click to expand...

I don't know. I have not tried this in multiple different types of soils. My soil is silty clay mix I suppose. Its just dirt. There are rocks and roots all over here too, but it doesn't seem to affect them. Mine also take all day to make and finish their nests, but it does depend on the temperature.

Gijoux said:

I was wondering how your nests held up with our very wet winter. Have you dug up any of the nests yet for your experiment? What temperature have you decided for your night drop? It seems I recall someone on this forum suggested a 12 degree drop at night. How do you set up your incubator to automatically drop the temperature at night? I am very egg-cited to see how your experiments go this year.

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I have not dug them up yet. Keep meaning to get to it and keep not having time.

My plan for a night incubation temperature drop is to shut the power off at night and let the insulated chamber slowly drop to room temp which will be 75-78 in summer.

Tom said:

I don't know. I have not tried this in multiple different types of soils. My soil is silty clay mix I suppose. Its just dirt. There are rocks and roots all over here too, but it doesn't seem to affect them. Mine also take all day to make and finish their nests, but it does depend on the temperature.

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Glad to hear that. I had read somewhere that the whole process to dig the nest, lay the eggs and to cover the nest should only take about 3 hrs. I was happy to read your gals also start many nests before they choose a site.

Tom said:

I have not dug them up yet. Keep meaning to get to it and keep not having time.

My plan for a night incubation temperature drop is to shut the power off at night and let the insulated chamber slowly drop to room temp which will be 75-78 in summer.

Click to expand...

That's a great idea. Thanks for sharing.