I am incubating my first tortoise egg. Waiting patiently.
My Tortoise Egg
- Thread starter RumWeatherReptiles
- Start date
That was when i first got my egg. This is a recent picture. The chalking is spreading well.
A sulcata???! What are you gonna do with a sulcata in NJ when it gets big???
You should confirm the calibration of your thermometer. There's a way to do it easily but I'm not sure of the exact numbers. For instance water boils at a specific temperature depending where you are geographically but your thermometer doesn't register that high. You can check calibration of a different one and then compare It to your current one. Water freezes at a specific temp also. If you Google it you can figure it out. Just stick the end in ice cubes with a bit of water and swish a few moments...then boil water and confirm the high end. My concern is that not only does the thermometer sometimes slip in the brackets PEOPLE put them together so you have a human factor in there that can cause failures. Plus they just stop working sometimes. Ours by the pool is wrong. Too lazy to discard it though.
I’m thinking bbq sauce. I hear they are a delicacy. Kidding. I am only taking on the hatching and hatchling care. His forever home is in Florida.
Thanks for the advice. I will look into that. The incubator setup was brand new. The temp has never fluctuated. Except once when the water i added was colder than it should have been. But it quickly warmed back up. As of today the egg has almost completely chalked.
Some temp fluctuation from time to time is okay. There is certainly fluctuation in the wild when they incubate in the ground. And they will hatch in the ground here too.
I don't know if you know but higher temps hatch more females than lower temps. @Tom knows the perfect temp for "just a successful hatch" but if you're leaning towards wanting females go one or so degrees higher....your temp looks good there to me from what I've seen others do but I haven't hatched any. That's why I was harping on thermometer calibration. One or two degrees on average can matter.
I have no preference of sex. Just a healthy hatchling.
I have been in constant contact throughout with Randy over at tortstork. He has given me great advise so far.
That's great...I believe he's a member here.
Yes. I believe his name is shellfreak on here. I did everything he told me to do, and everything he told me should happen has happened. I’m getting psyched.
I would be too. I incubated chicken eggs once. It was super fun!
Nice. The Hovabator i am using is the same basic model you would use for chicken eggs. I can’t believe how easy it has been.
Egg Update:
It really is awesome to come check on this every day. Almost completely chalked now. Pumped.
It really is awesome to come check on this every day. Almost completely chalked now. Pumped.
Candling (it’s an old iphone and i only held it as long as it took to snap a picture.)
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