My little CB group

[biochemnerd808]

I got my RTs out of brumation on March 15, and they have hit the ground running. All eating and active.
Look at my beautiful CB Russian tortoises. They range from 2.5-8 years old, 250g - 1100g. The biggest girl hatched from my first clutch ever, and she laid 13 eggs last year.
I originally raised 9 CB babies, but in spite of incubation temperature I ended up with 5 males. 3 of those males were hatched by a friend, and it turns out she didn't use a digital thermometer.
I kept all 4 females, and 2 of the males.

 

[Tom]

Lovely group.

Incubation temps for temp sexing are only known for sulcatas. They are the only species that has been lab studied to determine what temps derive which sexes. You could be the one to figure out the temps for Russians.

I'm going to start sending people your way for babies, along with CarolS. Is that okay? I LOVE it when people captive breed Russians.

 

[Carol S]

Beautiful Russian Tortoises.

 

[MichaelL]

I got my RTs out of brumation on March 15, and they have hit the ground running. All eating and active.
Look at my beautiful CB Russian tortoises. They range from 2.5-8 years old, 250g - 1100g. The biggest girl hatched from my first clutch ever, and she laid 13 eggs last year.
I originally raised 9 CB babies, but in spite of incubation temperature I ended up with 5 males. 3 of those males were hatched by a friend, and it turns out she didn't use a digital thermometer.
I kept all 4 females, and 2 of the males.
View attachment 342068

Love it!

 

[biochemnerd808]

Lovely group.

Incubation temps for temp sexing are only known for sulcatas. They are the only species that has been lab studied to determine what temps derive which sexes. You could be the one to figure out the temps for Russians.

I'm going to start sending people your way for babies, along with CarolS. Is that okay? I LOVE it when people captive breed Russians.

Thank you, Tom. That's an honor. Feel free to send folks my way - they need to be prepared to wait a few months after hatching before they can have their baby shipped though, as I raise them until they have at least tripled their hatch weight. I also intend to raise a small group of babies to yearlings.
I've taken 3 years off due to our big cross country move, so I'm excited to have babies again this year.

I've hatched a little over 100 RTs over the years. (Yeah, not an impressive number, but considering the small clutch size of RTs, I feel good about it!). I incubate in bone dry vermiculite, with several containers of water in the incubator for humidity. Here is what I've found:
The first year, I used the dial thermostat that came with the Hovabator, and just a digital thermometer. I aimed for 89°F but had two slight temp spikes to 91°F. Of the 6 eggs, all of them hatched. 2 babies had split scutes. I'm still in touch with all the owners, and all are female.
The next year, I set up two incubators, due to having more female RTs. I used a Hydrofarm digital thermostat to control them both. I kept one at 89°F and one at 90°F. I placed the Hovabators on styrofoam, and put a folded wool blanket over them, leaving some air holes uncovered. Temps were VERY constant. The incubator at 89°F had a 100% hatch rate. The 90°F one had 2 fertile eggs die and turn black on the inside, and about 1/10 of the hatches had split scutes. I am not sure if this is solely due to the incubation temp though, because one specific female seemed to have 1-2 split scute babies each year, every year, and her eggs happened to be in the warmer of the two incubators. So there may be a genetic factor at play.
After this, I stuck with setting the digital thermostat to 89°F for the next years. I had a close to 100% hatch rate - a young female broke my winning streak by having only 1 fertile egg out of 4 laid. So far all the babies from those years hatched female except for 1 'breakthrough' male.

4 years ago, I got tired of the Hovabators, and built myself a better incubator. I sourced a small well insulated wine fridge, removed the wine racks, put in baking racks. I removed and drained the coolant and removed the compressor. Then I installed a heat cable on the bottom, ran the cable out through the wall. I had to put a cement brick where the compressor had been, to keep it from tipping. This incubator works SO well. Temps stay constant, and the heat cable only cycles on a few times a day. I am proud of having made it. I'm not sure what is different about this incubator, but I had 3 breakthrough males (which flashed before 2 years old) from this incubator. I wonder if maybe the multiple shelves had slightly different temperatures.

3 years ago, I had 4 people request males, "so they never have to deal with eggs" or because they wanted the smaller size of a male. I incubated 4 eggs at 85°F. They were from my most reliable female (whose hatch rate stayed 100% and happened to be the one who has split scute babies more frequently). One of the 4 eggs didn't develop, though it got veins. The other three hatched. To my surprise, one had all kinds of crazy split scutes, all down the top of his shell. These babies are now almost 3 years old, and two have flashed their boy bits, the other has a long tail but hasn't flashed. Looking at what German RT breeders say, it looks like I should have gone for 86°F (30°C) for males for better hatch rate at male temps.

So that's my observations about temps. At 89°F the incubation time was 59-75 days. Even within one clutch, there were varying incubation durations. I had one outlier where an egg stopped developing, but didn't turn black or stinky, so I just left it in the incubator. It hatched at 96 days, still with a yolk sac. The 3 ones I incubated male took 75, 76 and 80 days to hatch.

A few things I want to look into more. In the German Facebook groups, they incubate a little differently. They have warmer temps for female temp sexing (93°F!) but with night time cooling to 75°F. They also recommend night cool down for male temps. They say that this results in darker colored babies, fewer split scutes. Since I already have near 100% hatch rate, I don't want to mess around too much. But I am curious.

This year I added an aquarium bubbler into one of the water containers for oxygen exchange and to circulate the air and hopefully keep same temps all around the inside of the incubator. We shall see!

 

[MichaelL]

Thank you, Tom. That's an honor. Feel free to send folks my way - they need to be prepared to wait a few months after hatching before they can have their baby shipped though, as I raise them until they have at least tripled their hatch weight. I also intend to raise a small group of babies to yearlings.
I've taken 3 years off due to our big cross country move, so I'm excited to have babies again this year.

I've hatched a little over 100 RTs over the years. (Yeah, not an impressive number, but considering the small clutch size of RTs, I feel good about it!). I incubate in bone dry vermiculite, with several containers of water in the incubator for humidity. Here is what I've found:
The first year, I used the dial thermostat that came with the Hovabator, and just a digital thermometer. I aimed for 89°F but had two slight temp spikes to 91°F. Of the 6 eggs, all of them hatched. 2 babies had split scutes. I'm still in touch with all the owners, and all are female.
The next year, I set up two incubators, due to having more female RTs. I used a Hydrofarm digital thermostat to control them both. I kept one at 89°F and one at 90°F. I placed the Hovabators on styrofoam, and put a folded wool blanket over them, leaving some air holes uncovered. Temps were VERY constant. The incubator at 89°F had a 100% hatch rate. The 90°F one had 2 fertile eggs die and turn black on the inside, and about 1/10 of the hatches had split scutes. I am not sure if this is solely due to the incubation temp though, because one specific female seemed to have 1-2 split scute babies each year, every year, and her eggs happened to be in the warmer of the two incubators. So there may be a genetic factor at play.
After this, I stuck with setting the digital thermostat to 89°F for the next years. I had a close to 100% hatch rate - a young female broke my winning streak by having only 1 fertile egg out of 4 laid. So far all the babies from those years hatched female except for 1 'breakthrough' male.

4 years ago, I got tired of the Hovabators, and built myself a better incubator. I sourced a small well insulated wine fridge, removed the wine racks, put in baking racks. I removed and drained the coolant and removed the compressor. Then I installed a heat cable on the bottom, ran the cable out through the wall. I had to put a cement brick where the compressor had been, to keep it from tipping. This incubator works SO well. Temps stay constant, and the heat cable only cycles on a few times a day. I am proud of having made it. I'm not sure what is different about this incubator, but I had 3 breakthrough males (which flashed before 2 years old) from this incubator. I wonder if maybe the multiple shelves had slightly different temperatures.

3 years ago, I had 4 people request males, "so they never have to deal with eggs" or because they wanted the smaller size of a male. I incubated 4 eggs at 85°F. They were from my most reliable female (whose hatch rate stayed 100% and happened to be the one who has split scute babies more frequently). One of the 4 eggs didn't develop, though it got veins. The other three hatched. To my surprise, one had all kinds of crazy split scutes, all down the top of his shell. These babies are now almost 3 years old, and two have flashed their boy bits, the other has a long tail but hasn't flashed. Looking at what German RT breeders say, it looks like I should have gone for 86°F (30°C) for males for better hatch rate at male temps.

So that's my observations about temps. At 89°F the incubation time was 59-75 days. Even within one clutch, there were varying incubation durations. I had one outlier where an egg stopped developing, but didn't turn black or stinky, so I just left it in the incubator. It hatched at 96 days, still with a yolk sac. The 3 ones I incubated male took 75, 76 and 80 days to hatch.

A few things I want to look into more. In the German Facebook groups, they incubate a little differently. They have warmer temps for female temp sexing (93°F!) but with night time cooling to 75°F. They also recommend night cool down for male temps. They say that this results in darker colored babies, fewer split scutes. Since I already have near 100% hatch rate, I don't want to mess around too much. But I am curious.

This year I added an aquarium bubbler into one of the water containers for oxygen exchange and to circulate the air and hopefully keep same temps all around the inside of the incubator. We shall see!

That's awesome! The German facebook group information is very interesting, I've never heard that stuff before for Russians. The night drop and high day temps make sense I think, considering their native range temperatures.

 

[biochemnerd808]

I can also add that several RT breeder friends have compared notes with each other. I will ask them if I may name them - for now, I'll keep them anonymous.

Incubating at 89-90°F results in high hatch rate and females. 'Break through males' seem to happen about 1-4% even at these temps.
At 91°F, the hatch rate goes down, and split scute babies increase. We've kind of concluded it's 'not worth it' to go this high.
At 87-88° the babies seem to be either male or female. One breeder got mostly males at those temps (including the 3 babies I got from her to raise). To be able to really compare, we would need to use identical thermostats and incubators.
I don't know anyone here in the US who purposely incubated RTs male, so my little attempt at 85°F is too small a sample size.

One person had something happen and her incubator heated to 93°F for several days without her noticing. This killed all but 1 of her eggs. The one that lived split and bled a bit, but baby survived.

I really enjoy reading what Germans have to say on the matter (as well as their fabulous outdoor habitat builds!!). It seems that RT eggs can ground hatch, even in German weather that is more akin to Seattle weather than warm CA. Germans recommend the night cool down (requires slightly altering the incubator, to either have 2 heating units, or letting it cool to room temp). There is some fabulous German lit about RTs in the wild, as well - including in-detail research on the sub species and specific climate and terrain they live in. One of the subspecies is only awake and active for 8-10 weeks per year, their Summer aestivation rolls right into winter brumation due to the harsh weather. The babies there hatch the summer a year after the eggs were laid, surviving temps that at the surface are below freezing (but in the nest is not).

I'd love to hear what other RT breeders on here have to say. I've been somewhat AWOL from the forum for the past 5 years, and have enjoyed dipping my toes back in a little.

 

[biochemnerd808]

That's awesome! The German facebook group information is very interesting, I've never heard that stuff before for Russians. The night drop and high day temps make sense I think, considering their native range temperatures.

The German Facebook groups are fabulous, but definitely not for the faint at heart. Tortoise keeping is taken VERY serious by Germans. "Artgerechte Haltung" (=species-appropriate keeping) is the standard, and anything not living up to it gets called out pretty harshly. Tortoises all have to be reported/papered/documented officially there, must have an ample outdoor habitat with heated coldframe or greenhouse. There is a lot we Americans can learn from their methods, especially in cooler parts of the US.

 

[MichaelL]

The German Facebook groups are fabulous, but definitely not for the faint at heart. Tortoise keeping is taken VERY serious by Germans. "Artgerechte Haltung" (=species-appropriate keeping) is the standard, and anything not living up to it gets called out pretty harshly. Tortoises all have to be reported/papered/documented officially there, must have an ample outdoor habitat with heated coldframe or greenhouse. There is a lot we Americans can learn from their methods, especially in cooler parts of the US.

Wow that's very interesting. And hey that's great their tortoises are being well-cared for haha.

 

[Tom]

I've hatched a little over 100 RTs over the years. (Yeah, not an impressive number, but considering the small clutch size of RTs, I feel good about it!).

Are you kidding? 100 from a species that lays 2-3 eggs at time most of the time? That's incredible! I had no idea you'd done any where near that many. You should be in the running for "Breeder of the Year" for that number with this species. That is fantastic news, and what a wonderful thing you've done for the species. Truly inspirational.

The info in this thread is golden. We are lucky that you have shared this with us. I've not seen info anything like this anywhere for this species, and this should serve as a manual for anyone working with this species.

I use small computer fans in my incubator that allow me to dial in their speed. I run them on low. I have one on top and one on bottom of my large stand up freezer incubator. The top pe blows to the right and the bottom one blows to the left to make a constantly slowly circulating air current across the top of my two RHPs. One small fan might work well in your incubator. Just a thought.

The Germans seem very strict on what they believe is right, but very resistant to new info and better methods. Sabine and I used to talk and they gave her hell for raising her sulcatas correctly. Correctly by MY standards. They made all the same accusations and insults that I received when I came out with that info years ago, and they promptly shut their mouths when she kept posting pics of the smoothest, healthiest, best looking sulcatas in Germany week after week and month after month. She made a few enemies, but she also opened a lot of minds. I loved that woman, and cried when she passed.

I wish you much success going forward, and please share whatever you learn.

 

[biochemnerd808]

Are you kidding? 100 from a species that lays 2-3 eggs at time most of the time? That's incredible! I had no idea you'd done any where near that many. You should be in the running for "Breeder of the Year" for that number with this species. That is fantastic news, and what a wonderful thing you've done for the species. Truly inspirational.

The info in this thread is golden. We are lucky that you have shared this with us. I've not seen info anything like this anywhere for this species, and this should serve as a manual for anyone working with this species.

I use small computer fans in my incubator that allow me to dial in their speed. I run them on low. I have one on top and one on bottom of my large stand up freezer incubator. The top pe blows to the right and the bottom one blows to the left to make a constantly slowly circulating air current across the top of my two RHPs. One small fan might work well in your incubator. Just a thought.

The Germans seem very strict on what they believe is right, but very resistant to new info and better methods. Sabine and I used to talk and they gave her hell for raising her sulcatas correctly. Correctly by MY standards. They made all the same accusations and insults that I received when I came out with that info years ago, and they promptly shut their mouths when she kept posting pics of the smoothest, healthiest, best looking sulcatas in Germany week after week and month after month. She made a few enemies, but she also opened a lot of minds. I loved that woman, and cried when she passed.

I wish you much success going forward, and please share whatever you learn.

Thank you, Tom. Haha, you have me blushing. I don't think it's quite worthy of 'breeder of the year' since this species is so easy to breed... But thank you for the compliment! It's so satisfying to help in this small way to offset imports of wild-caught animals.

Brilliant idea with the computer fan, Tom. I'm going to look into this. Does it need a control unit?

Data points for my breeding. I know that people can get their tortoises to breed with less work and in less space, but I believe that healthy and happy adults with large outdoor habitats will result in superior babies:
1) I waited until my females were 1000g+ before letting them anywhere near a male. I also made sure they had at least one year in my care, so I knew they had strong legs from walking in the outdoor habitat, healthy food (weeds), and had ample access to cuttlefish bone (for calcium).

2) My males spend all year in solo outdoor habitats ('male jail') except for 1 conjugal visit with the females in the Spring. This is enough to provide me with fertile RT eggs all year long. Non-stressed females lay bigger clutches (maybe)? At any rate, not being bitten and mated more than once seems like it would be more pleasant for the females to me. The male habitats are several feet away from the female habitats, without shared wall, because if they can smell the females, they will pace and dig at the boundary wall.
On a side note, my amazing exotics vet in Portland pointed out that a male tortoise has a strong testosterone smell coming out of his nostrils about 2 weeks after brumation. We humans detect it as a slightly musky, slightly fishy smell. After she showed me (and I compared what the immature male's nostrils smelled like), I can tell when my males' testosterone is peaking. So don't mind me, sniffing tortoise noses (bet you will now too!).

3) brumation. My RTs, even the captive bred ones, are hard wired to brumate. I do a fridge brumation, with proper wind-down, of all of them once they have reached 200g. There are more detailed threads about brumation, but in short, I use an Inkbird thermostat to protect from freezing. They each get a bin of very slightly moist dirt (or coconut coir) with a oid and air holes. Every bin has a thermometer probe in it, and temps are kept at 3-5°C (37-40°F). RTs need slightly cooler brumation temps than Hermanni and Greeks, in slightly dryer substrate. They go in well hydrated after a month wind-down, and snooze for 12-16 weeks (depending on weather in Spring and a few other factors). I check for reflexes once a month, and weigh at 8 weeks and 12 weeks. Everyone keeps a steady weight, losing 1-2g or none. After waking them up (slow warm up overnight without lights, then allowing basking, and soaking on day 2). By the afternoon of day 2, all of them are eating. They pack on weight and eat, and 2 weeks after getting up, I let the girls get mated by a male. 25-30 days after mating, the girls start pacing and digging nest holes. The first clutches were 4-5 eggs almost every time, with one clutch of a whopping 6 eggs from my largest female (RIP, she and 2 other beautiful females were killed and eaten by a racoon 4 years ago, but that's a different story for another time). Then 3 weeks later, almost all lay another clutch of 2-3 eggs, and then some females still lay 1-3 clutches of 1-2 eggs in 3 week increments. The highest number of eggs I ever got from one female in a year was 14 - one of which was not fertile. I didn't breed every female every year, mainly so I don't end up in babies up to my eyeballs... Except for one girl, who laid fertile eggs the year she had no mating, my females just don't lay any if I don't mate them. (I vaguely remember reading something Joe Heinen said, that they can store sperm up to 7 years? But in my limited experience, no mating in Spring = no eggs).

4) having the male completely separate from the girls except for Spring mating has meant I don't get clutches in Fall that hatch in winter. I'm OK with this, because overall, the Spring eggs are more numerous, and the eggs themselves were bigger. It's also nice to have babies hatching in the course of about 6 weeks, so by winter, they are all similar in size. I've been getting RT babies hatching weighing on average 18g-20g with some 16g and 22g outliers. I had two extra fat babies that weighed 24g, which is huge for an RT. When the males had constant access to the girls, it seemed like egg size varied more. This might not be statistically relevant due to my small sample size... But I feel good about how I do it. I have not had a single issue with egg binding.

5) group sizes - I know that most folks already know this, but I'm putting it here anyway, in case a new person reads this. I never, ever, keep my RTs in pairs. I keep at least 3 females together in one large, planted and landscaped outdoor habitat, with many sight barriers and 1 more hide than there are tortoises. Even this way, females will get bitchy when they are gravid... And sometimes need to be put in my 'overflow' habitat by themselves. Some of my females are friendly with each other, and others just seem not to be able to get along. I rehomed one female who fought with everyone. She is a fantastic breeder, and seems to be doing OK in a larger group setting with many females... But I don't want to have to deal with biting injuries.

So... I know this was a series of really long posts. I hope the info contained here will help the species somehow... To reward you for reading to the end, here are a few pics of some babies I've hatched.

 

[Tom]

... since this species is so easy to breed...

I don't agree. I know people who seem to be doing everything "right" but have no success for years. It seems very hit or miss, and you have HIT big time.

Brilliant idea with the computer fan, Tom. I'm going to look into this. Does it need a control unit?

I prefer to run them with a little rheostat type controller so I can keep the airflow somewhat low.


You and I do a lot of the same things and we share some of the same observations. This thread should be stickied and serve as a guide on how to do Russians the right way. Thank you for sharing all this info, and for the pics too!

 

[Viola B]

I really enjoyed reading all about your Russian torts. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Jacqui]

Awesome posts!

 

[Jacqui]

If you write all of this up in an article, I would love to sticky it.

 

[turtlesteve]

I can’t believe I missed this post. Fantastic work. This fits into a pattern I have seen - a lot of species are assumed to not be that prolific, where the problem is really that husbandry has not been sufficiently perfected. Also, the importance of stress (or lack thereof) is underestimated by many breeders.

Keep them coming. I’d love to see these (and hermanns) bred in mass quantity to kill the demand for imports.

 

[biochemnerd808]

If you write all of this up in an article, I would love to sticky it.

Thank you - do you mean, compile it into 1 post (and maybe a little better organized?)?

 

[Jacqui]

You can do it however you like.