Artifical insemination of tortoises

mike taylor

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I'll take one of the smaller giraffe. So they came keep my bushes trimmed . Cyborg monkeys sound awesome .
 

mike taylor

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Sorry but house cats don't come from lions .
 

mike taylor

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Here's how we got house cats .
 

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motero

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I don't have any references, but they did this with an endangered tortoise years ago, (ploughshare i think). And the males ended up dying from the collection routines they were subjected to.
 

RayRay

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I don't have any references, but they did this with an endangered tortoise years ago, (ploughshare i think). And the males ended up dying from the collection routines they were subjected to.

Do you remember what the process was?
 

RayRay

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Do y'all think a mount collector where the tortoise mounts it and acts like normal and the collector part is attached to the mount?

I've read that is what they do for horses.
 

motero

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It was basically the same, electrical stimulation.
I could see if you had a tortoise that was young and going through that hormonal stage when they are just becoming mature, a mount collector might work.
Older fellows probably won't fall for it.

This all sounds like a lot of work, better to just let tortoises be tortoises. The stress, the possible injury, the low chance of success.
 

dmmj

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I really don't want to see tortoise semen collector as a possible job. I do wonder why they are using electrical stimulation to collect it
 

Yvonne G

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Yvonne G

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OOPS! I guess I should read all the posts before I respond, huh?
 

RayRay

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RayRay

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It was basically the same, electrical stimulation.
I could see if you had a tortoise that was young and going through that hormonal stage when they are just becoming mature, a mount collector might work.
Older fellows probably won't fall for it.

This all sounds like a lot of work, better to just let tortoises be tortoises. The stress, the possible injury, the low chance of success.

I dont think its be that hard tortoises are simple creatures.

I think making one the correct size and padded to reduce injury chances and painted to look like a tortoise would work even on an adult.

You might get better success out of it if you rub female urine or water a female was soaked in on part of it.

I could even see it being useful for vets who need to check on the male tortoises just have it on a raised platform with out a bottom and then they could examine them.
 

EllyMae

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I know I’m late to this convo.
But I’m just thinking logistically, how to collect. Creating a dummy for mounting wouldn’t be difficult.
a species specific collection sleeve would have to be made. As well as the “collection protocol” (They have these in different livestock like how to present the male to the dummy in the right way to gain the achieved outcome)
Research would have to be done on the storage of the samples.
(whether or not it could be frozen for storage and for how long with which how much dilution with which dilution liquid)

{Pig collections don’t survive freezing. They have to be stored and shipped at a constant warm temperature. There’s a warm bath machine they use}
Then to inseminate, I’m guessing the safest would be the intra-uterine method with a small incision, like they do with dogs.

In college, I either assisted or watched the collection of horses, bulls,and boars. I’ve spoken to people who have collected from elephants and dogs.

(Interestingly, they don’t use mounting dummies for elephants. They had trouble building one strong enough to support him. Plus it wasn’t safe for the zookeepers. So they do prostate stimulation by electrical pulses to help collect the sample. I toured an elephant breeding and rescue facility)


Overall, AI is used when there are very high quality parents who couldn’t “get around” enough as people would like them to, to get enough offspring.
For tortoises, this would work well for endangered species!
 

mark1

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Overall, AI is used when there are very high quality parents who couldn’t “get around” enough as people would like them to, to get enough offspring.
or dead ...….. assuming it is frozen properly , I believe the problem is timing in healthy dogs , which is a big deal with the shortened lifespan of frozen or chilled semen , maybe one of those is the problem in pigs ……. they got the timing in dogs down pat ......... I've had success with frozen semen and transcervical inseminations , semen frozen 8-10yrs , from long dead dogs …my dogs right now , their father was dead 5yrs before they were born ……..…. looking back at the life of an old dog or dead dog is 20/20 , you know without question what your breeding too ..... i'd think timing with turtles and tortoises would require information not yet available …….
 
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