This girl has a hard time laying eggs because her "egg canal" (space between plastron and carapace) is too small for average-sized eggs to pass through easily. About a week ago she managed to lay 2 unbroken eggs, but the swelling in her cloaca doesn't seem to be going down.
Has anyone ever...
Thanks! The color is genetic and doesn't change with diet. It's funny, I like all the different colors, but my favorites are the dark ones like yours.
Wow, I didn't realize you were carrying everything upstairs.
That's amazing! Keep up the excellent work!
I pile all kinds of leaves in my tortoise pens. Mostly mango and longan leaves because I have those trees in my yard. I think any kind of leaf is probably fine for them to dig in.
I just put up a short video of one of my females nesting. The soil is a mixture of clay/sticky soil and potting...
You will need at least 20 centimeters of soil for the nesting area. They are very picky about where they lay their eggs. Mine often choose places where the soil is quite solid.
That looks AMAZING! Excellent work! Do the tortoises like it? It looks like they have plenty of shade on the right hand side of the picture. My elongs love to bury themselves in dry palm fronds, so I usually pile those up in a shady corner for them.
I'm not sure if you got your snail questions...
Hi sorciere,
It looks like you have a beautiful, healthy creature -- congratulations.
I have been keeping elongata in their native range for the last five years. I keep them outside in a natural setting (except when they are very tiny). Here’s a few observations from my experience:
Snails...
This breeding season I collected a total of 28 eggs from my 4 female Indotestudo Elongata.
Here's my hatch rate thus far:
Healthy hatchlings: 10
Slugs: 3
Perfectly formed stillborns: 11
Still incubating: 4
I'm really pleased with the 10 healthy hatchlings, but pretty sad about the 11 that...
I've noticed a tendency toward mild shell fungus with young elongateds in a closed chamber -- still working on solving that one. I would suggest going as large as possible with the enclosure, with lots of plant cover and things to climb over (rocks, logs, etc.). Mine do a surprising amount of...