There's Nothing Like Fresh Eggs

I love fresh chicken eggs probably as much as the next guy but what I love even more is when my girls drops eggs. She essentially put four into a hole in the ground today. I found her trying to dig in the outside tortoise pen but its only got maybe an inch of substrate, at most, above concrete. So, I grabbed her up and put her in the inside pen, a turtle tub, that has substrate on both ends - one end shallow and one end a deep basin. She started to dig with a couple of minutes. Keeping my fingers crossed that this was the first day she was trying to deposit them and that they are fertile; her last batch was all duds. Makes me think maybe the male is shooting blanks since she is relatively young as tortoises go but I suppose she could be the reason. Then again, they may have sat at too cool a temperature last time before I got them into the incubator. Today I got em set up inside the incubator within 15 minutes or so and had put them out side where it was nice and warm until then. 







She, by the way, is a Hermann's Tortoise around 17+ years old, damned if I can recall her age. I got her when she was a at least a couple to few years old and have had her at least 14-15 years is all that the little gray cells can come up with. She won Best In Show at the Long Island Herpetological society's annual show in 2007; I think I had her about 2 years by then. 

I should be able to tell if the eggs are fertile within a week or so. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

All the best,
Glenn B