Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just received this pair of Indian star tortoises last week and was happy to see the male trying to mate with the female.

Here you can see him trying to get his tail underneath her. I don't know if they mated successfully, nor do I know if they are mature yet to produce eggs. Does anyone know how big they have to be to successfully mate? This pair measure's about 5 inches in length each. I do not know their age.

Note: the newspaper was just temporary, I now have timothy hay down for their substrate.

Nice to know the boy is attracted to the pretty girl!

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Patrick

niiiice...!
How many does this make now?

Hi David,

I have only 4 tortoises now, these two stars and a pair of Greeks. I recently sold Tori my Herrmans tortoise. But I have 20 other turtles, mostly box turtles plus another 16 hatchlings including these 4 that just hatched this week.

I posted this on the box turtle forum:

Looked what happened in my incubator on the first day of Spring!

My 22 year old 3 toed box turtle " Clyde's" eggs started to hatch! These were laid on January 5, 2007 and are hatchlings 4, 5, 6, and 7 for her since November! That's 80 days incubation time.

I noticed these eggs starting to pip last night and took these pictures this morning. I only have pictures of three eggs here. The fourth egg is in a different container and has just started to hatch.

I was really worried about these eggs. They all developed dents in them last week and I thought there was a problem. I increased humidity and was happy and relieved to see them hatching.

I'll post more pictures later once they are completely out of their eggs. I hope you like these ones!

Spring has sprung!

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Patrick

While the male in your photo could probably produce viable sperm at his size, a 5" female is not large enough to produce eggs yet in my experience. I have bred and raised up a good number of all three types of Star Tortoises, and the youngest pair of G. elegans (of either type)which successfully bred and produced babies were a three year old male (5.5" long) and a 5 year old female (6.5" long). I am sure of the ages, because I hatched both of the parents.

One of my friends has just hatched the first F2 (second generation) Burmese Stars from some of my babies which hatched in 2001 which he raised up. The females are already over 8" long and the males are about 6.5" for comparison with the G. elegans mentioned above.

Thanks for the info Zovick. I thought they were still too young yet. Maybe in a few years it will be possible for some fertile eggs from them.
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Patrick