Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well I got my first batch of Black Mt. Tort.eggs today. Its been a little tense when two females started nesting in the same nest. This usely will end up bad. Eggs get crushed with two,moving around and rearanging the nest. I built a temperary fence around it for zig-zag-1. A young CB 95 phayrei on her third clutch. The other is a huge phayrei named The Little Girl. She would brake down or climb over to get back to Her nest. So I switched and she would just brake out. So I'm back with the two per nest thing'ie and watching them like a halk. Hobbled out there this norning and distracted them with some chow to check out the nest. The Beatles song "I am the egg man" came to mind. 41 eggs less than 12 hrs.old. another close call in this yearly event. Vic.......pic of Little girl.

Great news on the nests, Vic. And my congrats on the F2 M. phayrei. That a good few years' worth of work on your part, I know. A job well done!

Bill

Thanks Bill. When I first bought my Mt.Tortoises "on impulse" I then started to look up stuff on them. To my suprise there were only a few breedings reported at that time, but only took you to the hatching,then for the most part end of story. I desided that just breeding a rare animal wasnt going to get us any closer to "saving'it. One could only "save" a species if you could raise the offspring to breeding adults, and their offspring would be the "saved" generation. Well, now after all this time I see that the so called F2's are a far cry from the founder's quallity and you in fact may lose a little stabillity. The wild founders were already far into their breeding prime of life, ware as the first generation is just in the beginning. It will be fun to see how her babies improve in weight, hatching mortallity, growth and development improve over the years. This is the first generation breeders third season. I'll let you know in 64 days! Vic.......pic always some surprises....I call it teakwood*

The Mother of the tortoise I was just talking about layed 49 eggs today. As I was talking about these eggs are 20 grams heaver than her offsprings eggs, but her clutch size has decreaced. She is a 23 year captive wild adult. When I heard the late W.Auffenburg give a talk in my first budding years of studying herpetology he said of studying reptiles. "it all Math." I though, oh no, not Math, first Latin, now Math. What part of this will be fun. Now I know, temps of days, nights,air ground, humitity, nest, incubation, weight of, mass, age, number of eggs, hours of, daylight, dry season, wet season, air pressure, growth/chemical development and more. Vic........pic caption, "are you keeping track of this"