OMG!!

[Neal]

Another one hatched yesterday and another today. Do you realize that this is over 6 months incubating? for leopard eggs??? Everything about this clutch is amazing! Too bad the babies are just normal-looking.

For us, 6 months is average. We have some in our incubator that just passed the 6 month mark. They still look good.

 

[Katherine]

For us, 6 months is average. We have some in our incubator that just passed the 6 month mark. They still look good.

Cool. I have heard of eggs hatching at the 13 month mark but never experienced more than 5months. It's good to know not to give up on them. Do you (Neal and/or Yvonnne) cool your eggs post laying? Or pop them right in the incubator?

 

[Neal]

We have very poor hatch rates with the ones we put in the incubator. Next year we are going to try to cool them off a bit before placing them in the incubator.

We left most of our clutches in the ground this year, I don't expect them to hatch out until the monsoons start in the summer. By then, they will have been in the ground for over a year.

 

[Yvonne G]

My tortoise dug a hole and deposited eggs that I didn't see. Then, who knows how much later, she again dug a hole...in the same spot as the first one, only slightly to one side. I saw this one. When she was finished, and I started digging them up, I found two cavities with eggs. I put all the eggs (I think there were a total of 27) in the same bowl, so I don't know which had been in the ground for a while.

Since I've been playing with my new incubator, I've come to realize that the thermometers I've been using for my Little Giants are a bit on the cool side. So even though I thought I was incubating the leopard eggs at 86F degrees, I think it was actually a bit cooler. Maybe even 3 or 4 degrees cooler.

 

[Jacqui]

Well the two clutches explains the month difference in hatching times some what.