My first hatchling Geoemyda japonica

After trying for nearly 7 years I finally hatched my first Geoemyda japonica, Japanese leaf turtle! I have been producing hatchling Geoemyda spengleri in small numbers for many years but this is the first time I received fertile eggs from my G. japonica. In past seasons I received crushed or cracked G. japonica eggs. This season I finally received two eggs that were in tact and fertile. I incubated them similar to G. spengleri but a little bit warmer. It took 67 days for the hatchling to emerge. The other egg molded completely by about day 45. It stopped developing at about day 30. This little hatching is very robust and not at all shy or timid like G. spengleri. The hatchling at on the 2nd day of being hatched, and hasn't been picky at all with the foods that I've offered. G. spengleri often take many days to eat and survive off the egg sack nutrients for up to 15 days. G. japonica seems ready to eat right away!

Eggs of 08!

Found my first G. spengleri egg of the season on April 30th. The egg was already banded so it might have been a couple days old. So far it looks good and I am incubating it at room temperature.

On the same night, after I discovered the spengleri egg, I looked in the incubator and noticed two of my Eastern box turtle eggs were cracked. I thought they must have dried out since I already gave up on them ever hatching. After further review, tiny little eyes were looking back at me from the eggs! These eggs were laid in water, during semi-hibernation and never looked fertile. Some started molding and I pretty much just left them in the incubator out of laziness. Surprise, surprise! This just shows that you should never give up on eggs until they go bad. There are two more eggs left...so we will see what happens! I'll try to post pics of the new babies. This is my first time hatchling this species!

First Post! Found eggs from my turtles!

Tonight while cleaning out one of my Vietnamese black-breasted leaf turtle, Geoemyda spengleri, enclosures I noticed something bright white peeking out of the sand. I reached in and noticed a rather normal looking....well normal looking for a leaf turtle, these eggs are huge in comparison to the female's body size!!!...egg and removed it from the sand. I dug around the sand a bit more and discoverd a second egg in miniature size! This egg looked exactly like the first except it was really, really tiny. Too small to ever be fertile or hatch out i'm sure. So after cleaning off this second egg I found a third egg! Normally this particular female lays only one egg per cluth, so this was shocking, but the two extra eggs looked like eggs that never completed their development. This last egg was the smallest of the all. Both of the small dwarf eggs could fit on top of a penny. I have never seen mini-eggs in spengleri but I have seen a smaller dwarf egg connected to a large/normal egg (like a parasitic twin) from a reeves turtle. Should I even incubate these smaller dwarf eggs? I'm sure they won't be fertile but I might just do it anyways.
More soon!
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