Sulcata hatchlings

[Tara1981]

❤️ 🐢

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

Congratulations! Very cute little ones!

 

[Tom]

❤️ 🐢

Don't leave them on paper towels more than a day. They will start eating them. There should really be greens in there with them. They literally reach their heads out and eat the substrate before they even break out of the eggs, and they will eat the paper towels. Those new babies should really be in a brooder box. I do six babies per shoe box. I use grape leaves, mulberry leaves, or lettuce leaves as "substrate" in the brooder box, and add in lots of weeds, leaves, flowers, baby opuntia pads and anything else edible to introduce them to it. Its okay if they have big yolk sacs. The brooder box is a good place for them to absorb the yolk sac.

I soak them daily and move them into a new box with fresh greens in it every day. After about 10-12 days, they have absorbed their yolk sacs and the umbilical scars have closed up, and they are ready for their first enclosure. They can stay in the brooder boxes in the incubator, or somewhere similarly warm, for two or three weeks with no issues. When I move them to an enclosure, I use orchid bark as their first substrate, and I lay greens all over the place. I carpet the whole enclosure with grape leaves, mulberry leaves or lettuce leaves, so that they can't take more than a few steps without walking right into food. Its natural for them to nibble and sample the new substrate, so I want them surrounded by food for the first two or three days. I taper it down and by day four, all the food is in two or three sunken terra cotta saucers around the enclosure. At this stage, I like to clip whole branches of mulberry or grape vines and drop those in the enclosure both for cover and for nibbling. The babies feel much more secure hiding in the leaves, and I replace the branches every couple of days as they wilt.

Hope this helps. Questions are welcome.