Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When Millie the Eastern laid her second clutch of four eggs, I noticed that one of the eggs was significantly smaller than the others, and figured that it was a dud. Wouldn't you know it, that's the only one that hatched: the others weren't fertile.
Anyway, this little guy is TINY!!!
I measured it at a whopping 7/8ths of an inch long (carapace). Amazing.
Has anyone had one this small hatch and survive for them? I'm curious: its been out of the shell for a couple of days now and is quite active. Everything seems to be normal except for size.
Stephanie

Two years ago, when I first "got into this", my 3 toed Michelle laid her first clutch in the pen and hatched there successfully.
She later laid a clutch of two which I retrieved and successfully incubated. My other female Mallory laid a clutch of 5 in the ground which I left in the ground. I checked on them around the expected hatch time and found that four had gone bad and found one intact egg (that didn't look very good), I covered it up and checked on it later and it had pipped and out came the smallest hatchling I have ever seen. I didn't measure (I probably have a photo somewhere) but it was the smallest of all the hatchlings that hatched that summer. I worried about her survival but she is thriving now and has caught up with the other two year olds in size. So far Michelle has been prolific, last summer resulted in 9 eggs and they are all now yearlings and this year her first clutch of 5 is doing well and the 1rst baby in her second clutch of 4 has pipped. Mallory laid 5 eggs last year that never hatched and as far as I know, no eggs this year.

I used to keep ornates when I was a kid in western Nebraska, and a few months ago my sister in MO gave me three eggs she had accidentally dug up in a mulch pile in her yard. Two of them hatched into the cutest terrapene carolinas you could hope to see. One (Romulus) weighed 8 grams at birth and the other (Remus) weighed 7. I'm not terribly sure what a normal weight is. They both took their first mealworms three days after hatching (yesterday). Anyway....

Tom

I don't have an accurate scale, but the "normal" sized hatchlings weighed about 7-8g, the puny guy 5-6g.
Eating within a week I would regard as a good sign...
Stephanie

Another poster has had success, so that's good. I have not, but I have only had one normally hatched runt box turtle, the other two were overwintered and runts, and none of these three have survived. I believe the trick is to keep them warm and humid and make sure they get eating. Of course, besides taunting them and trying every kind of moving food possible, you can't really force them to eat at that size, so it may also be luck.
Make sure you get it eating as soon as you can!

I had TWINS come out of one egg last year. They both shared one yolk sack for about 4 days. As you can imagine they were pretty small, about the size of a nickle. they survived for about 7 months before they died.
I hope you have better luck.

Pat