Down the center of hes shell it looks dissformed.Is or will this be a problem?
Reptile & Amphibian Forums
Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.
Whats wrong with this sulcata shell?
locsmith
Dec 25, 2006 03:06 PM
Replies (4)
EJ
Dec 25, 2006 05:23 PM
Those are irregular central scutes. It has absolutely no effect on the health of the tortoise. They usually occur due to excessively high incubation temperatures. Many breeders believe that high temperatures produce females (was this sold to you as a TSD female?) Odds are it will be a female but there are zero guarentees.
>>Down the center of hes shell it looks dissformed.Is or will this be a problem?
>>
-----
Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care
mayday
Dec 25, 2006 05:36 PM
The scutes are not normal and this might be due to the incubation temperature of it's egg. But the tortoise will be fine I am sure.
For some reason I have seen a very high number of extra scutes, split scutes and other aberrant conditions in captive produced turtles and tortoises in the past few years. I saw many (especially aquatic turtles) at the Expo and elsewhere this year that had extra scutes. I believe many breeders are incubating eggs at too high temperatures. I have asked a number what their incubators are set at and I am shocked at how often I hear 88 to 90 degrees F.
No wonder the aberrancies.
DaviDC.
Dec 30, 2006 02:15 PM
I have a 7 year old Hermanns that was incubated to be female & has only 4 scutes across the back instead of 5, along with a couple of split scutes on the side. At about 3 years of age, I discovered she was a male when he started humping his pen mates. That's when Molly became Ollie.
zovick
Dec 30, 2006 03:31 PM
Your experience is living proof that Temperature Sex Determination (TSD) does not work equally well in all tortoise species. It has been my experience that it is highly effective in G. elegans (close to 98% of nearly 250 G. elegans babies I hatched and whose progress I followed until they matured turned out to be the expected sexes). However, it has proven to be very unreliable in other species, such as G. radiata.
