Baby Burmese Stars are hatching

Markw84

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thought I'd update as the first hatchling is now out of the brooder box today in its first enclosure along with its clutchmate that also hatched on the 11th.

So it's only been 7 days, but they are doing extremely well and growing so time to go into their first enclosure.
Here's the little one I pictured above when it hatched as the first of my 2020 season. So you can see how its grown in just 4 days from the picture at the beginning of this post.
Weighed 19.7g when hatched 2/11
Today weighs 23.4g exactly one week later. A 20% weight gain in one week.
You can clearly see the expanding growth seams. I like to see that growth before I take them out of the brooder box.

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Here's the plastron. Compare to the picture at the top of thread at hatching. The yolk sac is completely healed and perfectly smooth with no wrinkles and very little indication of where it was. Amazing change in just one week. Signs of a very healthy tortoise.

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In their first enclosure. Just the first two for now, but many more will join them very soon! Even though this was just after their daily bath, the one went immediately into the water dish as stayed there for several minutes.

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I use my smaller 4 ft x 2 ft Smart Enclosure I build for their first home that I keep in my office. It works well as everything is easy for them to find at their very small size. I upgrade them to a larger enclosure at about 50g-60g. When I change enclosures, I try to arrange things the same way so their patterns of finding things does not have to change - just expand a bit!

Pothos Ivy, spider plant and wandering jew are the plants of choice. The pot I've been growing on the left with the wandering jew and spider plant is so overgrown it gives a great, dense hide for many babies. It's actually hard to find them in there! That's how baby tortoise love to live!!!

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MarxBrosMom

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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:

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First baby out of egg and immediately to first bath and weigh-in:

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This is how this baby came out of egg with very little yolk sac:

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Here's the full clutch at bath yesterday:

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Undeniably adorable!!
 

bouaboua

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WOW. They are all very beautiful.
 

mrnewberry

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Thanks for sharing! Always good to hear how people are hatching and tearing these!
 

Markw84

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Hi Mark! New to the forum here... I am interested in one of these little 'guys'. Will you be offering shipping?
Yes I ship and the first 2 clutches are now ready to find new homes. I've already shipped a few off to new homes. PM me if interested for details.
 
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