Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've got a leopard clutch. they were due to hatch the first week of September but 5 of them already hatched last week. I have no idea why they hatched so early. So should I expect the rest of the clutch to have gone at that time or in Early september as I calculated. What do you think the deal is?
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1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa adults
1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa 2003
0.1 Rubber Boa
0.2 Eastern Hognose Snakes
2.2Western Hognose Snakes
1.1 Womas
1.0 African Hedgehog
1.0 Sulcata
1.1 Leopard tortoises
1 Pleco
2 Silver Dollars
3 Bosemian Rainbows
1 Cory Cat
1 Upside Down Catfish
2.0 Fire Guramis
1 silver arrowana
1 sentenal bichir

uhh... I think that is it.

The range for leopards that I've hatched out is 90 to 160 days.

The litterature says they can go 400 days.

I just cleaned out the incubator of eggs that were over a year old... not leopards.
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Ed
Tortoise_Keepers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

I would definately wait, at least til september if not longer. You could disect an egg, but I would not recommend doing that until their supposed hatch date. Just don't throw them out.

Assuming they are fertile I would not throw them out. A fertile full term egg is fairly easy to discern as they are solid white and feel heavy. I would increase the moisture by misting the due eggs. But there can be a pretty wide gap as to when eggs from the same clutch hatch. For instance, I had some redfoot eggs hatch on July 1 and 2. There was one egg from that clutch that was good but nothing was going on with it till yesterday when it finally pipped--5 weeks after the others.

I wonder why that is. I mean, why would 3 hatch within hours from each other and the others wait awhile longer. I'm sure the others were fertile because after 2 months I threw out the ones that did not have any veins.
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1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa adults
1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa 2003
0.1 Rubber Boa
0.2 Eastern Hognose Snakes
2.2Western Hognose Snakes
1.1 Womas
1.0 African Hedgehog
1.0 Sulcata
1.1 Leopard tortoises
1 Pleco
2 Silver Dollars
3 Bosemian Rainbows
1 Cory Cat
1 Upside Down Catfish
2.0 Fire Guramis
1 silver arrowana
1 sentenal bichir

uhh... I think that is it.

Well, with redfoots anyway, even the onset of of early development is not uniform. Some within a clutch develope veins at one point while one or two from the same clutch will take a month or more longer. I commonly have eggs from the same clutch, incubated right next to each other, hatch out over a period of a month.
But when I was was breeding leopard tortoises and T. hermanni, they would hatch pretty much within a few days of one another.
Be careful about discarding eggs because they don't appear to be good when candled. I had a friend who used to get redfoot eggs all the time but she never hatched them. She would tell me "Oh, I threw them out. They were infertile" . She would be doing this when the eggs were only a few days old! So I asked her how in the world she knew they were infertile. Her reply was, "Well, the yolks didn't drop and with all my aquatic turtles the yolk drops when they are fertile." Sometimes a little knowledge can be pretty dangerous eh?

it is weird and funny how this is.
It's obvious I'm a novice
-----
1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa adults
1.1 Kenyan Sand Boa 2003
0.1 Rubber Boa
0.2 Eastern Hognose Snakes
2.2Western Hognose Snakes
1.1 Womas
1.0 African Hedgehog
1.0 Sulcata
1.1 Leopard tortoises
1 Pleco
2 Silver Dollars
3 Bosemian Rainbows
1 Cory Cat
1 Upside Down Catfish
2.0 Fire Guramis
1 silver arrowana
1 sentenal bichir

uhh... I think that is it.