Embryo alive.

[Anyfoot]

In my incubator I have 2 containers, one has potential fertile redfoot eggs in and the other has what I think are duds, I separate them because if one blows it makes a right mess. Today 2 eggs blew. So I decided to discard the other potential duds. All these eggs have a definite dark and light area.
2 eggs weren't what I expected, and 1 of them was a major mistake on my part. I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, but I'm a believer that we should post bad news as well as good news. Maybe something can be learnt from this(other than don't break the eggs open).
The first egg was a fairly well developed dead neonate. For some reason development has halted and looks to me that it dried up. This egg was from a clutch of 7. Five of them hatched as normal.
The 2nd egg was an embryo that is still alive(devistated is not the word) but what is done is done. The top half of the egg was bone dry and all the yolk had settled to the bottom of the egg along with the embryo. This is why I was seeing a definite dark and light in the egg.
If you look in the video you can see movement including the lower limb.
I've put this back in the incubator in a tub, think it's obvious what's going to happen but we will see.
My humidity in the incubator has been low lately, around 70%. Is this why one dried up and the embryo had half a dry egg in it.
Apologies if this upsets anyone, I won't be breaking any more eggs in a hurry. The embryo egg is 114 days old and I've raised my humidity back up.

 

[wellington]

Wow that sucks, sorry. But hey, if you had known, we know you would have left it alone.
I wonder though if you try to close it up if it would have a better chance of surviving then just leaving it as is to survive?
I'm just thinking it would keep it wetter and bacteria, etc out of it better.
I would try taking a chicken egg, see if you could carefully get it to crack in half. Dump out the egg part and clean it out with boiling hot water. Then place the whole tort, egg that left and all into the chicken egg and try to seal it closed.
Can't really hurt. It's highly doubtful it will survive as is. Could be a break through if it worked of how to save broken live eggs.

 

[MichaelaW]

@HermanniChris do you have any advice?

 

[HermanniChris]

I've seen some foreign keepers actually used plastic wrap to cover the exposed embryo and successfully hatch the animal eventually.

 

[Nanchantress]

Thank you for sharing those pictures and video! While sad, it is also truly fascinating and educational. And not something many of us would otherwise get to see, so I appreciate your sharing.

 

[PJay]

I'm sorry you are going through this, thanks for sharing the amazing pictures/video and the experience. Maybe the plastic wrap would work, it's worth a try. Having a window into the growth process all the way to a hatchling would be interesting.

 

[Anyfoot]

Thanks all, it's just one of those things, it died within an hour of me opening the egg.
The veins had shrunk to the thickness of a hair, so I'm assuming the air started to dry it out causing the veins to shrink and starve the embryo. Also I'm not sure why there was no albumen.
Looks like the Carapace is one of the last things to develop because this had all 4 limbs but no Carapace, although you can see the shape of the Carapace developing.
Sad but interesting.
Btw it was 144 days not 114.

I've just had an egg pip on day 101, so this may throw up a surprise too, seems very early.

 

[SarahChelonoidis]

Thanks for sharing these images and video. It's both a bit of a cautionary tale and also fascinating to see the living embryo.

 

[Greta16]

Wow. Sorry things didn't work out but thanks for sharing.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Eggs have been little balls of mystery to me.
Ones that have hatched looked just like some that exploded in a mass of goo.
Though gruesome, the photos are very educational.
In fact, many of your posts and some if the conversations they have started have been a tremendous help.

 

[surfergirl]

Wondering if the new bandages out called nexcare would have helped. They seem to allow air to move through at lower rates but hold in moisture. Some have no pad on them and seem like it might be an option to save cracked eggs maybe not this bad a scenerio but some that are slightly cracked. Be worth a shot to try. I just learned so ethibg from this, i will never open one up to check, it will have to be stinking or blown before i peek. Things like this help us learn this stuff though. I killed a few tadpoles as a kid tryinv to recreate the right enviro.. always sad but ended up with a great frog experience.

 

[Anyfoot]

During my denial period of not wanting to throw eggs away I put around 30 eggs in pots within my tort house(to be more precise, I hid them from dawn), I now throw any eggs that are layed because I have enough babies for my own learning curve needs. Anyway I decided to ditch the ones that look like duds.
First 9 were duds, the tenth egg I candled had light shining through it, however i recovered there was a baby tort in it after.

When we candle eggs and see light through the egg I don't think it necessarily means they are duds, because as the tort grows it's absorbing the yolk, because of this there is a point in the egg where the developing tort is sat in the egg that is only half full of yolk, the top half of the egg has nothing in it and light shines through, as the tort develops more the actual tort fills the egg so light does not shine through.
So depending on when we candle eggs and at what stage they are at you may see light or not, but yet it can still be fertile either way.
It's gross I know, but some hard line tort keepers may learn something from this.

I then proceeded to break two eggs that I found that were cracked to find the first one had an embryo developing, needless to say I put the 2nd cracked egg back in the pot.

I have 16 eggs left and will not be breaking any more open, said it before but this time I mean it.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

That's rough.
The eggs that I toss. I just toss. I don't want to know that I was wrong. Or smell that I was right. Cracked eggs I keep. Cracked eggs that smell funny go into the garbage.
I must have 60 right now and none have exploded on me yet. Im not quite to the point that I will throw away an egg that has a chance of hatching. But I'm close.
The egg honeymoon, coupled with the extreme difficulty I had trying to find babies new homes are wearing thin.