Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I would like to see if someone could locate an adult male wood turtle for me. If you know where any can be found, email me at RRolands@hotmail.com or respond here please.

Also, does anyone know if spotted turtle gender is temperature-dependent? Are the ranges 86-87F for females and cooler for male accurate? Or is temperature not even a factor in gender determination? I would be interested in reading about experiences anyone has had with temperture manipulation and any advice/tips.
Thanks

Here are some Spotted Turtle egg incubation tips I had posted some weeks ago in a previous post. They will prob help you out as well. Also, hopefully you are looking for an Adult Male Wood that is part of someone's LTC private collection or captive bred. Watch out for any responses of someone trying to get you an Adult Male Wood that they can not give proof of its origin, as Wood's are protected throughout their range.

Spotted Turtle Egg Tips:
1. As soon as you dig the eggs out, mark the top of the egg with a pencil so you always know which is the top.
2. With a cotton ball (new one for each egg), carefully clean off each egg with a dilute chlorine solution. Mix 4 teaspoons of bleach with one gallon of clean water. Then use tissue paper to thoroughly dry off the egg. This process helps ward off any bacteria or fungus that might have been in the laying medium.
3. Place the eggs in tupperware containers with moist vermiculite/perlite. Equal parts of water to vermiculite/perlite by weight. You can use a basic pencil to puncture two holes in the lid of the container.
4. Spotted turtle eggs are temp dependent. 22.5-27 C (72.5-80.6 F) should result in males, while 30-30.5 C (86-87 F) should produce only females. I wouldn't recommend higher than 30.5 C due to chance of scute abnormalities. Temperatures between 27-30 degrees C may result in a mixed clutch, with more of one sex being produced depending on which sex dep. temp range you are closer to.
5. You shouldn't have to add any more water to the vermiculite/perlite during incubation, but do keep a open jar of water in the incubator to help maintain humidity.
6. Disturb the incubator as little as possible, but once to twice a week open, then close, the lid of eggs to "burp" them. It releases built up carbon dioxide and brings in fresh oxygen. Be mindful of the condensation on the inside of the lid when removing it so you don't accidently drench the eggs. You can just let the water run off back into the vermiculite.

Hope this helps,
-JG

I've read with interest your tips for eggs. Have you ever or do you think it would be harmful or even neccessary. To wash an egg in that way (diluted bleach) that is showing a little hary type mold I'd guess or is it to late by then? Also when I measure perlite and water by weight it does not seem near moist enough. Do you add more water durring incubation for evaporation loss and is it bad to mist them? You caution about drenching from the drops of condensation will that cause them harm? How long is long enough to wait for an egg that is not hatching but not showing any real sign of rotting either? Thank you all for your previous posts I think I've read most I could find and even stole a few of your excellent pond-bog-pen ideas from your photos. This shareing of data is most useful.

If I do see a small amount of mildew, yes I do wipe it off the egg very gently with a cotton ball/gauze and the dilute mixture.

Another way of doing the vermiculite/perilite if you feel it is not moist enough by weight is to mix the medium with a some water and then pick up handfuls of it, squeeze it as far as it will possibly squeeze to get the excess water and then put that directly in the incubating tub. You do not want excessively moist medium as it will attract mildew. With a lid on and two air holes it should retain the same amount of moisture in the medium throughout incubation so I normally do not add any more water. On the occasion it does happen to dry out too much, you can take a misting water bottle and just mist the medium around the eggs. Also, I always have a glass jar of water in the incubator to retain humidity.

The reason I warn against the condensation dripping off is not so much that it might drown the eggs, but that the direct wetting of the egg may induce mildew growth.

As far as the actual eggs are concerned, if they are viable they will have become bright white within the first week of being laid. If not and have retained the pink hue they are not viable and I discard them so as not to attract mold to the viable eggs. In a non-viable egg the pink hue will actually become a little darker pink often with some yellowish hues coming in.

Hope this helps
-JG

Thank you.
I would also like to know if anyone has had an egg hatch that was laid in the water but not there for more than a few hours. Either Woods,Spotteds, or Box.

Normally it is best to get the egg out of the water within ten minutes of its depositing. A few hours most likely drowned the egg, but put it in the incubator and give it a few days to see if it does show the tell tale signs of viability or not. As a follow up to your previous Q, today was one of the days where I misted the vermiculite around one clutch of eggs that seemed to have lost a little too much water to the air than the others. So yep sometimes they do need water added.

-JG

Hi I posted some questions about incubating spotted turtle eggs yesterday,maybe you could have a look and help with them. I have another question about the eggs. When you put them into the moist vermiculite do you cover the eggs or just place them on top of it? Also does it matter if I am using a light as the heat source? It is one of those energy saver twisty bulbs, I used it for raising seedlings and it seems ok so far but I just have the eggs laying on top of the vermiculite. Thanks for any help.

As of right now the majority of all out dated and up to date information on spotted turtles as well as most chelonians does state that sex is determined by incubation temperature. There are so many different personal experiences on record but most information on the subject is exchanged only through word of mouth. There still is not enough literature on sex determination as well as any other data on turtles in general. As a rule it is said that the higher the temperature will produce females, and the lower the temperature will produce males, in between will give you a mixture of both. I have experimented with my own captive animals and have used different incubation techniques along with various incubation mediums. Two years ago I hatched serveral Northern Diamondback Terrapins from my group that I purposely incubated at a shocking 90 degrees. I kept one hatchling back to see what it would result in and surprisingly it is a male. There could be so many factors as to why this happened though. Was there a fluctuation in the overall temperature in the incubator durring the sex determining stage of the embryo? I have no idea. I did also notice that most of my spotted and north american wood turtle eggs did not survive such a high temperature while the diamondback and eastern box turtle eggs did. Since that year my eggs are set for 87 degrees for females and 75 degrees for males in seperate incubators. A pair of spotted turtles I hatched in 2003 that are now with a friend have recently been determined females and they were set at 86 degrees. One of the most interesting theories is how north american wood turtles do not apply to sex determined by temperature. They use chromosomes like humans that decide their sex. I have hatched out both sexes every year since 2002 and keep the eggs at 87 degrees. They hatch rather quickly in 43 to 61 days and have no imperfections at hatching. When incubated at higher temperatures my spotted and diamondback eggs tend to come out with extra scutes while the box turtles only do sometimes and the woods almost never do. In field research it is known to find more males of a given species if the habitat is under a canopy where sunlight is not as strong as in open areas. If the habitat is more exposed to the sun, females are found in larger numbers. This is however not always the case, which is one of the many reasons why chelonian research is ongoing and poorly understood. So many factors condradict each other, and the best way to learn in my opinion is personal experience. The only year I ever lost a significant amount of eggs is when I really pushed the temperature up too high, other than that I hatch decent numbers of various species of emydid turtles every year. I'm sure you will talk to others who have different results than I do and I think personal experience really needs to be shared more often because lets face it, captive breeding efforts are about the only way to save our world's turtles and tortoises as long as native habitats are still being destroyed.

-Chris

Hi,
I recently lost the legally-owned spotted I had for close to 20 years, and was wondering if you could recommend a reputable breeder, so I can replace him with a couple more.
Thanks,
Ken
KenatMontrose@aol.com