greentrees
Sorry, sometimes I just can’t resist. I liked the peeing part! 🙂 I’ve been hatching dbt’s the last 2 years. My females are just starting to mature. My dbt’s are in a large pond with a bunch of other turtles and I don’t usually know what I’ve got til they hatch (and don’t know what I don’t have til they don’t hatch, I guess). The one dbt that I watched lay her eggs was a mind-blower. I was standing next to my big pond and this under 5 inch female crawled out, came underneath me, between my feet, and started digging a hole. I thought, no, she couldn’t be wanting to lay eggs – she’s too small, and right between my feet!?!?! The real mind-blower is she plopped out 5 good-size eggs – don’t know where she could have kept them. I marked those and only one hatched. I find that a lot of my turtles lay infertile eggs their first year. Some years back I raised albino redears indoors, because everybody said albinos couldn’t take sunshine, and they don’t see well (to get their share of the food), and they are valuable. They started laying at about 6 years and laid all infertile eggs the first few years. I finally got disgusted, and since I heard that redears probably need a cooling down period, I chunked them (carefully of course) outdoors in the big communal pond. Well, they immediately crawled up on logs and started basking, and instead of getting sunburned and dead, the gradually turned brighter and brighter yellow and some developed electric orange striping. Then they started laying good eggs! That’s about 6 years ago. Also, the females pass on the pigment in the eggs, and even the babies are much brighter yellow than from adults raised indoors. modelgrafx@… wrote: