Sulcata eggs

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Sparkypyro

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New member here. Have an 11 year old female Sulcata that my wife bought 5 years before we met. Back in March my next door neighbor who also has a Sulcata asked if we could watch him while their house was fumigated over the weekend. We agreed and now have 7 eggs. Figured something was up a couple weeks ago when for the first time she avoided myself and the lawnmower( she usually follows me around the yard while cutting the lawn). Then about 2 weeks ago she scrapped away the grass and began to dig but stopped. She has only once in 10 years decided to dig. This was her second time. This past Saturday she decided to fig again and spent the entire day digging. On Sunday she moved a couple feet away and began to dig again this time only using her hind legs, no so much a big hole like the day before but a pit. We went for a walk to the beach and when we got home I saw that she had covered the hole up entirely and was now sitting(guarding) what used to be the hole. She spent the entire night out in the middle of the yard guarding her spot. Checked on her again yesterday after work and she was back to digging the big hole from Saturday and was digging directly towards the spot from Sunday. I decided to see if we had eggs in the small put from Sunday and found 12 eggs. 3 were completely destroyed which left us with 5 unbroken and 4 with broken shells but an intact membrane. Set them up in a box with a heat source(87degrees) and was waiting for my neighbor to get home to get his incubator. Somehow a couple crows must have seen me take them into the garage and manage to finish off 2 off them. We now have 7 left(2 with small broken shell dents and 5 unharmed). Got them all set up in the incubator now. Any tips or good reads we should read up on? Do Sulcata eggs need to be turned or do they just need to be left alone? She is back to digging in her big hole again from Saturday and by yesterday evening she had dug completely into where the egg chamber was so we are fortunate we got them out when we did otherwise we pretty certain age would have destroyed them all. She looks to be getting ready to drop some more. Will have to keep a close eye on her the next few days.

Just gonna ad that she is super tame and very social. She has never shown any aggression towards us and likes to follow us around the yard when we are back there. When we go out back to eat dinner she comes out of her dog house and comes over to sit by us while we eat. My 2 year old is in love with her. He is always mumbling "Tank" and wants us to give him an apple so he can go hand feed her which she seems to enjoy.
 

Yvonne G

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Hi Sparkypyro:

No, you don't turn the eggs at all. That's quite a story. Crows are pretty observant, huh? Who'd a thought they would go into the garage.
 

Sparkypyro

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The crows will not be around much longer. They have wiped out all the little birds that use to live in our yard, they pull crap outta the trash cans and leave all over the ground.

After I typed about the egg turning thing I found a topic that said not to. Are egg crates ok to set the eggs in inside the incubator, have seen a few people say that is what they use. How much time should I expect for the next clutch?
 

Sparkypyro

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Looks like she is finally happy with her new pit and one of my 2 year old feeding her hibiscus flowers.

staticmap
 

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