Vic,

Your story reminds me of one that I had with the Dreher Park Zoo in West Palm Beach, Florida years ago.

They had a large pair of yellowfoot tortoises that they wanted to get reproduction on but had know idea how to do so as they had got eggs but could never hatch a single one. A good friend of mine was a keeper there at the time and so he asked if I could come by and advise the zoo on what to do. Prior to this, the zoo would occasionally call me to identify exotic tortoises that people either found wandering roads here in south Florida or that someone wanted to donate.

So, I gave them a general care regime and then gave them exact directions on incubators, incubation temps, humidity and substrate that I had learned from my own trials and errors.

The next eggs they got from their pair began hatching and soon they had more hatchlings than they knew what to do with...literally. A year or two later I had another friend who was interested in obtaining a couple of neonate yellowfoots of a captive bred origin. So, naturally I approached the zoo management and inquired if I could purchase two hatchlings from their group---that I had learned they were having difficulty disposing of. The reply I got from the zoo management? "We don't deal with the public. We are an accredited zoo and we only deal with other ACCREDITED institutions and never amateur keepers."

I wanted to scream in their faces.

[ Show Entire Thread ]