First time posting. Recently, a wild eastern box turtle laid some eggs in my backyard. I noticed a horde of ants over the nesting site today, and I am wondering if there is anything I can do to protect the eggs now and for future? I want to check on the eggs but I do not want to harm the potential survivors by digging them up. What are my best options?
Wild Turtle Egg Protection
- Thread starter Oota
- Start date
It might be too late, with the ants there. Are they meat eating ants?
This is the wrong time of year for nesting. Did you actually see her laying eggs? They usually nest next month to hatch in September.
I would excavate the nest, being careful to keep the eggs in the same orientation. If it looks like the ants did no damage you can set them on a moist paper towel or moist dirt, cover lightly and set them in a warm place to finish incubating.
This is the wrong time of year for nesting. Did you actually see her laying eggs? They usually nest next month to hatch in September.
I would excavate the nest, being careful to keep the eggs in the same orientation. If it looks like the ants did no damage you can set them on a moist paper towel or moist dirt, cover lightly and set them in a warm place to finish incubating.
It looks like the eggs are unharmed, but I haven't dug them out just yet. It looks like an animal was trying to dig them up and I can see some of the eggs inside the nest. When you say same orientation, do you mean the order in which they were in the nest, or direction they were facing? I'll do some searching around on incubating in the meantime, for now I've been avoiding messing with the eggs too much since I'm not sure about how to care for them.
Don't tip or turn them
I recently visited a beach where sea turtles had nested along it, randomly and the turtle conservation had put building gridded rebar over the nest and bamboo sticks to secure and a tag showing laying date. This stopped kids and animals burrowing . Ants would be different I think you let nature be nature and hope they hatch and there are hatchlings.
