rough gritty egg.

[jason00]

Hi,

I have been incubating this egg from a 20+ year old Indian star tortoise for about 30days at 29-30 Degree Celsius now.
It has rough and gritty surface. candling it at day 30th.
i dont see anything in it. Infertile?

some background of the same pair of tortoise:
female is around 20+ year old and was housed with a male 1 year ago for a few weeks, she laid 1 egg yolks and 2 other rough gritty egg which turn out not fertile last year.
This year i pair her up with the same boy for another week.
male is around 4-5yr old at when they tried to mate.

 

[RandyTortoise]

There could be a lot of reasons for the gritty egg. As far as being fertile or not, that is nature….
While, I don’t know for sure, I would look at her diet and make sure she is getting enough calcium in her system, which is the base building blocks for her body to produce eggs. It is possible she has a calcium deficiency and her eggs shells are not forming properly? Just a thought.

 

[zovick]

Hi,

I have been incubating this egg from a 20+ year old Indian star tortoise for about 30days at 29-30 Degree Celsius now.
It has rough and gritty surface. candling it at day 30th.
i dont see anything in it. Infertile?

some background of the same pair of tortoise:
female is around 20+ year old and was housed with a male 1 year ago for a few weeks, she laid 1 egg yolks and 2 other rough gritty egg which turn out not fertile last year.
This year i pair her up with the same boy for another week.
male is around 4-5yr old at when they tried to mate.

The egg is not fertile unfortunately. Usually hypercalcified eggs like that one are not fertile.

I would not give up, though. Just keep feeding the tortoises a good diet and supplement it by sprinkling their food with both Ultrafine Rep-Cal (with Vit D) and Herptivite several times a week. Also I would recommend putting the male and female together about once a month for 5-6 days if you want to increase your chances of getting fertile eggs.

Good luck!