Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I've waited so long for this! I have finally caught my box turtles in the act!!
He is an eastern & she is a 3-toed. We even got the camcorder to capture this special moment!! ha, ha!
I'd like to know how many weeks it takes until the female will lay her eggs?

Thanks,
Christine

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/index.pl?photo=73571

This doesn't mean they will lay eggs. Even if it was a successfull mating females sometimes won't lay eggs for years. Plus different species (Eastern & three-toed)sometimes won't produce fertile eggs. My 9 boxies breed a few times a week but I never get eggs from most of them.

She can lay eggs in a month or so tho, if everything works out right. It will then take 60 to 90 days before the fertile ones will hatch.

Why would you want to interbreed easterns and three toeds? Why not just get the opposite sex of each and try breeding those? If the offspring were ever released, or given to someone who thought they were pure breed, you could potentially pollute the wild / captive populations. And the offspring will probably outlive you, so you could never really control it.

I know that they interbreed in the wild were they over lap, but I think intentially interbreeding box turtles is a bad idea.

Bill Griffin

There is no real sound justification for this virewpoint other than opinion. There are many populations of carolina with "mixed" genes. I wish there were more of an understanding of evolution and ecology and less a desire for "things to stay as they are right now" in the wild. The nature of life is change and to discourage cpative breeding is rarely a good thing. I do agree there are cases of irresponsible breeding but this is not one of them. Besides if the "novelty" of a "hybrid" box turtle will sell well, it will only reduce the pressure on the precious wild populations.

I appreciate your opinions.

As a keeper and breeder of box turtles, and other turtles for over 30 years, I respectfully disagree with you, and yes it is obviously my opinion as well as others. I did make the point that interbreeding does occur in wild populations. I actually encourage captive breeding, but not interbreeding. I also understand that life is about change and the ability to evolve – in the wild. With captive box turtles, why would you encourage interbreeding? It is just as easy to breed pure bred animals, and that would reduce the pressures on wild populations wouldn’t it? I would not buy or sell a “hybrid” box turtle.

And interesting poll would be, how many people would buy a hybrid box turtle, versus a purebred box turtle. Also, how many people if wanting a pure bred box turtle, would want the assurance that the box turtle has not been bred to a different subspecies.

I guess I am just a purest at heart. Pure easterns and pure three toeds are very pretty animals. The hybrids that I have seen fall very short of the beauty of a pure bred box turtle.

Interesting point of view – thanks. I was not trying to discourage the active propagation of box turtles, just trying to discourage intentionally interbreeding box turtles, when it would be very easy to breed a pure bred animal.

I'm kinda on bills side on this one. I would never buy a half-breed because I don't want to encourage it. I have however adopted a Three-toed/Eastern mix, and he is quite the beautiful turtle, but I would never buy one. I only adopted him because he needed a home.

I hear you all on this. I suppose I could blame LL Reptile for that! ha, ha!
You see years ago, I had ordered an eastern box turtle from LL Reptile and they had sent me a three-toed. It was my first pet box turtle and I was excited to receive it. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't an eastern, as I had ordered, but decided to keep her anyway. I am glad I did because she's got a nice personality and nice markings on her neck and front legs.
It was only last summer that I purchased this beautiful captive-bred male eastern (I call him the alpha male because he is the most gorgeous thing I ever laid eyes on!) I had always been obsessed with easterns and always desired one!
It will be interesting to see though, if any eggs do hatch, as the male's genes are probably so dominant that they might show up remarkably on the offspring. We shall see!
Who knows?!

Christine

Christine, I am sorry if I came off two harsh, or critical. If I may make a suggestion, it would be to try and get a female eastern and male three toed, you may be able to keep them together, as from my experience, they should not be interested in the other subspecies, if they have a like counterpart. If they show interest in the other subspecies, then you could create another pen, then have two pairs. If you don’t want to spend any money on buying new turtles, you should be able to adopt with relative ease.

Bill Griffin

Well,
sorry if I was harsh, Bill. I do know who you are and about your experiece. I guess it just seems to me that epeople have a delusional picture of how "speciation" occurs and what it means to be a t c carolina ot a t c bauri or triunguis or what have you. I am never convinced of the "purity" of a breed anyway. I think dog breeders and , more recentely and perhaps more relevantly, snake and tree frog breeders have people believing that its possible to really know where the genes are and how "pure" an anumal is. This coupled with ther KNOWN fact of intergradation and (in my differeing expereice) the empirical result that captive cross=subspecies breeding does occur readily, its seems silly to keep them seperated. But i do respect your judgement that detriment due to crossbreeding is possible, i do not respect the fear of contaminating a gene pool which is not really all that pure anyway.
I think its much better to sort animals by geographical location and if possibel biotope. So i might not keep easterns i knew weere from new york with three toeds. But if i had a florida eastern i'd see no reason to keep it away from a florida three toed.

No offence. The problem with forums is that making statements/arguments is that they always come off a little harder than the author’s intent. The beauty is that discussing/debating topics only benefit the hobby/hobbyist. I respect your point of view, and you make some very valid/interesting arguments regarding cross breeding. Now I would really like to know who you are, so please indulge me and reveal your identity – send me an email if you like.

I tried having these two species together with males and females of each, but they did not seem to show a preference by subspecies... the result was integrades.

I now keep them separated.

Good point. The best bet is to keep the two subspecies separated.

A three-toed/eastern would be a cross or an integrade I believe. Since they are the same species, but different sub-species. A hybrid is a mix between two species.

i wanna get my eastern to mate should i get another female eastern. where can i adopt one of purchase one?

Let me just tell you from experience, mixxes do not sell well if you represent them truthfully. If your intent is to sell babies you will have a better time being careful about your breeding and being able to tell a potential buyer exactly what species they are getting and not that it's a mix.