The South African leopards are notoriously difficult to hatch artificially. I've been trying different things for years with little success. New info has come to light this year, and I'm trying a bunch of different things. I'm doing different cooling regimes for breaking diapause. Different temperatures and different time frames. I'm incorporating a night drop in temperature into the incubation and a variety of other things. Trying to "crack the code".
@Sterant posted this thread recently about his unprecedented success hatching Chersina angulata babies: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/new-chersina-hatchling.185546/
I was instantly inspired to give it a try. Here is my little Hamburger depositing her most recent clutch:
Here is the area the next day. You'd never know it if you hadn't seen it the night before:
One nice thing about living in a dry area is that it makes it easy to find the damp dirt where the females have dropped their eggs:
I collected her 9 eggs. 8-12 is normal. 15 is the record.
I used the wet dirt from the nest area and covered them up:
I'm going to run them through my diapause breaking routine first, and then commence incubation and continue following Sterant's example. I'll post updates of the incubation, candling and sanding when the time comes.
@Sterant posted this thread recently about his unprecedented success hatching Chersina angulata babies: https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/new-chersina-hatchling.185546/
I was instantly inspired to give it a try. Here is my little Hamburger depositing her most recent clutch:
Here is the area the next day. You'd never know it if you hadn't seen it the night before:
One nice thing about living in a dry area is that it makes it easy to find the damp dirt where the females have dropped their eggs:
I collected her 9 eggs. 8-12 is normal. 15 is the record.
I used the wet dirt from the nest area and covered them up:
I'm going to run them through my diapause breaking routine first, and then commence incubation and continue following Sterant's example. I'll post updates of the incubation, candling and sanding when the time comes.