Forstenii breeding attempts

[Turtlepete]

Spring is in full swing here in the south, so I've been playing tortoise sex therapist the past few days, trying to introduce the forstenii for breeding attempts. They are very aggressive but courtship is interesting. Lots of head-bobbing, biting and ramming. I try to reside over them while they are being introduced so neither animal is hurt in the process. The female regularly grabs the males legs in her mouth, which could go a lot worse with bites directed at the face.

No successful copulation yet but I was pleased with the results of their first introduction, since the male at least had the right idea .

 

[HLogic]

Forsten's give a new meaning to the phrase "get a wiggle on!"

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Their mating sounds like a jet.

 

[Turtlepete]

Both females and males are paired up on either side of the enclosure now. I found their introductions and courtship very interesting, and how it has progressed. To begin with, I started with short introductions, completely supervised, for 30-45 minutes. At this point mating was violent and entailed biting at the legs and constant ramming in the sides. The males paid little attention to mounting the females and were more interested in ramming them. I sat right over top of them to ensure they weren't biting each other in the face.
After a few weeks, introductions lasted longer, an hour or two, and I was comfortable leaving them together without supervision. At this point, I separated the enclosure (previously three sides) into three and paired up a male and a female on either side. Interestingly, after being together for the first week or two, courtship is not violent at all. I rarely see any biting or ramming; the males just calmly mount the females without protest.

Both pairs copulate constantly so I'm holding my breath for some offspring this year. I believe this female may be gravid.

 

[Anthony P]

This is great news, Pete. Looking forward to positive updates.

Have you spoken to Ben about these lately?

 

[Turtlepete]

This is great news, Pete. Looking forward to positive updates.

Have you spoken to Ben about these lately?

Ben is the forstenii guru!

Pretty sure the bigger female deposited eggs somewhere, due to a mysterious loss of 80 grams between times I weighed her (4 day gap). Conveniently, it was when I wasn't able to keep a close eye on them, and their enclosure has become such a thick forest that finding any eggs without witnessing the nesting process is challenging, to say the very least.

The smaller female (pictured above) is still gaining weight and has a hearty appetite. Ben mentioned hyperactivity and loss of appetite as cues to them being gravid, neither of which she has shown yet. Time will tell.

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

This has been interesting to read. I just used several 1 to 2 hour introductions. The females initially battered at the males, then the males at the females, then they mated. Then I separated them. If I were to over interpret this, the females know the males need aggression to psych up for mating so they act as surrogate males, then loose the battle and then get mated. They lost interest in each other right after when they did mate, otherwise they just rammed each other non-stop. Nice story, I have no idea if it has merit, but there was white sticky stuff about the tail regions of both. Tortoises are sloppy at insemination, so that seemed normal to me. Mine don't sound like jets when they mate though LOL.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Good luck, PETE!