Reptile & Amphibian Forums

some of you may remember last year I palpated my small female boxie and she felt like she may have had an egg.. I'm not sure if it was an egg or just something in her intestines, but we'll (for the sake of this post) assume it was an egg.

IF she did have an egg and layed it out in the enclosure, and it was fertile, hatched and some how managed to survive the winter when will it emerge?

here in New England we should be going into spring within the next month or two, temps are already going above freezing during the day.

As soon as the weather stays consistently warm during the day and night, and it's rained (or you've watered well). This is what happened with mine. The turtles came up mid April and the babies came out May 8th.

Every year, I always think that I've discovered all of the nests and artificially incubated all of the eggs. I've never had a year yet that I haven't discovered little renegades in at least one of the pens. I think that the younger females double clutch very, very late.

In my experience, the hatchlings emerge earlier. Like mentioned in the other reply, usually during heavy downpours. Each year, I replace the piles of leaves and other organics that the turtles brumate in. I pick through this carefully, both collecting worms and looking for "stragglers". Most are found above ground, during heavy rains, and early. The rest are found while digging through the debris.

Temperatures can be tricky, and it's difficult to predict emergence by temperatures. I know to start looking for hatchlings when the azaleas start blooming. When the tulip blossoms die, I start looking for adults.

I hope you find some hatchlings. It's such a thrill!