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We have a large colony of aldabra tortoises in Naples, Florida. We have been very succesful with our bleeding program resulting with many of hatchlings over the past years. If anyone has a question or issueS with this species please e-mail me and I will be happy to provide any information and experiences we have had with ours. Thank you, Greg. E-mail ALDABRAMANGREG@HOTMAIL.COM.

That is so cool. How long have you had them for? Did you raise them yourself? It would be so neat to see some pictures. They are one very tough species to breed outside of their native range.

You might want to consider writing up some care and breeding notes. The last published account I have is dated 1986 from a group in Florida.

Have you held any back to raise yourself?

>>We have a large colony of aldabra tortoises in Naples, Florida. We have been very succesful with our bleeding program resulting with many of hatchlings over the past years. If anyone has a question or issueS with this species please e-mail me and I will be happy to provide any information and experiences we have had with ours. Thank you, Greg. E-mail ALDABRAMANGREG@HOTMAIL.COM.
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

I will be happy to send you photo's of our entire breeding program, just send me an E-mail at ALDABRAMANGREG@HOTMAIL.COM. All of our producing breeders were originally imported. Over the past twenty years We have found it very challenging, basically no fertility when any captive born & raised aldabra tortoise is involved. We have had great success in fertility with well acclimated older imported slow growth females and very large males.

That is most likely the problem people have with this species. It's not that they are so tough to breed its that they are large and take considerable time to reach aviable reproductive age. Couple that with the high price tag and you have limited people working with groups and even then not groups that are at a good reproductive age.

I also would enjoy seeing photos of your breeding program.
website

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CDieter
'Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.'

I agree with your point. I know most of our breeders are at least 80 years old and even older for the males. We have had several very large captive born and raised males that are just big in size but young. Compared to one that has grown at a natural pace within his natural diet, providing that slow consistant growth. I am convinced that the natural growth rate with the proper natural diet resulting in a mature larger male is why we are having such high consistant fertility within our colony. I am convinced this relates to females also. The sizes of our imported breeding females seem not to be as important of a facter as does age and diet. Just to add, I am convinced that diet has alot of influence with our success. Our colony grazes constantly on natural grasses, weeds, and some cactus all year round. We only provide a very small amount of Mazuri tortoise chow during egg laying season only. I only know of a one captive raised females that have had fertility and produced hatchlings in the 25 years of working with this species. We have had several on breeding loans at our program and our males have little if any interest. Now the captive raised males, they try relentlessly and never are successful. This is basically because they are just big 400 to 500 pounders with no age physical maturity, they usually fall within their efforts. I agree with you sir, very perceptive points.

I have a queation about the ones you know of that were CB and produced offspring. Do you know if the second generation offspring were smaller/weighed less than what wild Aldab's do? Also have you noticed if your eggs have increased in numbers as they aged. Have you had any that started having fewer eggs but the eggs weighed more and the babies grew to a larger size by one year. The reason I am asking is this was the case with my second generation Manouria. The eggs and babies weighed half of what the female that had them weighed when she was born. It was a good size viable clutch, as was the following year but much smaller, higher mortallity, more week runts than from what I get from very old wild females that were adults when I got them 23 years ago. One breeders eggs increased in number each year for about 16 years and then had fewer eggs but much heaver,as were the babies, which at the one year point weighed twice as much as offspring from past clutches did with the same males. We have a long way to go before we cross any finish line for the survival of tortoises. Vic Morgan

I do not know of any second generation from captive born hatchlings. I know of one person who has had fertility with a captive born and rqaised female. As far as the size of our hatchlings are very consistant regardless of the female size.

You need to contact Bob Clark (Bob Clark Captive Bred Reptiles). I beleive he has raised up captive hatched Aldabran tortoises and has bred them. I don't know if both male and female were captive hatched but it would be interesting to get his take on things.

Richard

I'm guessing that Bob could could care less on this aspect on herp keeping. He lucked out big time. He raised one pet an put it in a fantastic situation. The female was his and the male was very long term... from what I know.

>>You need to contact Bob Clark (Bob Clark Captive Bred Reptiles). I beleive he has raised up captive hatched Aldabran tortoises and has bred them. I don't know if both male and female were captive hatched but it would be interesting to get his take on things.
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>>Richard
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Last time I emailed him, he said the eggs he was incubating turned out to be infertile.

DOC

The last time I spoke with Bob Clark he had related he had one clutch with six hatchlings. This was several years back.

Went back and checked my emails...Bob had three clutches incubating early in the year and as of my May email two clutches had failed to hatch and a third was still incubating...never received any word on how it did....hope he had better luck with the 3rd.