My first clutch of the 2020 hatch season for my Burmese Stars has hatched! This never gets old. I love seeing baby tortoises hatching. Spending the last year doting over the babies from the 2019 season, it is amazing how tiny these guys are compared to 2019 hold-backs I have. The 2019 group is now 9-11 mos old and weigh 160g - 260g. The new 20g babies look so small now!
For those interested, I did this year totally change over my diapause method as a result of my experiments' last year's results, combined with the nest studies and weather data we've been following. This year I am doing the technique that overwhelming produced better results last year. The timing of the moving to the next stage is not exact as I do it as convenient close to the schedule. The schedule is: I leave the eggs at room temp in my office for a week. Temps normally go from 68° to 71° most days. I then place them in an incubator for 30 days that is on a timer to be at 78° for 10 hours an then let drop to 70° for 14 hours each day. This mimics exactly what I found 6" deep nests do in weather like Myanmar has late winter when eggs there break diapause. I then place them in another incubator set at 89° for 13 hours, then a drop 3° for 11 hours. My top shelf is about 1° higher than my lower shelves in that incubator, so I move most of the clutches to the upper shelves after 3 weeks for another 4 weeks or so.
Using this method this first clutch pipped in 76 days of being placed in the final incubator. So this clutch was a total of 40 days diapause, 76 days incubation. Much shorter incubation period and the babies are vigorous and have less yolk sac upon hatching than I often see. But that also seems attributable to the incubation medium I switched to last year. 1/2 vermiculite, 1/2 peat moss.
My second clutch has pipped overnight. So they went 76 days exactly as well to first pip. They were a total of 39 days diapause, 76 days incubation.
First clutch of 2020 hatching:
First baby out of egg and immediately to first bath and weigh-in:
This is how this baby came out of egg with very little yolk sac:
Here's the full clutch at bath yesterday:
For those interested, I did this year totally change over my diapause method as a result of my experiments' last year's results, combined with the nest studies and weather data we've been following. This year I am doing the technique that overwhelming produced better results last year. The timing of the moving to the next stage is not exact as I do it as convenient close to the schedule. The schedule is: I leave the eggs at room temp in my office for a week. Temps normally go from 68° to 71° most days. I then place them in an incubator for 30 days that is on a timer to be at 78° for 10 hours an then let drop to 70° for 14 hours each day. This mimics exactly what I found 6" deep nests do in weather like Myanmar has late winter when eggs there break diapause. I then place them in another incubator set at 89° for 13 hours, then a drop 3° for 11 hours. My top shelf is about 1° higher than my lower shelves in that incubator, so I move most of the clutches to the upper shelves after 3 weeks for another 4 weeks or so.
Using this method this first clutch pipped in 76 days of being placed in the final incubator. So this clutch was a total of 40 days diapause, 76 days incubation. Much shorter incubation period and the babies are vigorous and have less yolk sac upon hatching than I often see. But that also seems attributable to the incubation medium I switched to last year. 1/2 vermiculite, 1/2 peat moss.
My second clutch has pipped overnight. So they went 76 days exactly as well to first pip. They were a total of 39 days diapause, 76 days incubation.
First clutch of 2020 hatching:
First baby out of egg and immediately to first bath and weigh-in:
This is how this baby came out of egg with very little yolk sac:
Here's the full clutch at bath yesterday: