curious about RT breeding

[DayDreamer]

we got our little male a few days ago hes only 4 inches. so no breeding anytime in the near future this is simply out of curiosity, all I really know is that if down the road we got a female they would not be able to be housed together. so how do you guys go about breeding them? do you just put them in a shared enclosure for a little while each day? how do you know that the female is mature enough if you dont know the ages. is it just by size? because i could see that not being reliable considering some grow faster and larger. (I could see it being easy to tell when the male is mature enough once he starts showing off his man-bits)

what about the interbreeding of subspecies with russians it seems to be a hard to tell... I could see how people could unknowingly mix the subspecies (i dont think i could tell for the life of me what subspecies koopa is they are just to similar)

 

[kanalomele]

It's typically by size yes.

 

[Wartortle]

I like to refer to this link the most. It is the most comprehensive, detailed description of breeding many varieties of tortoises that I have seen so far. ATC really did a great job with it.
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread-87521-page-2.html
Russians are on page 2, but it states that the males must be at least 5 inches and they never had a female smaller than 5 3/4 successfully lay a good egg. Age isn't an issue as much as size.
Breeding between subspecies is possible, but success rate is apparently lower. If you wanted to breed Russians in the future, either don't worry about it or post different shots of your tort so we can attempt to identify him or possible future hers. Try for a 1 male to 3 females minimum for best results.