greentrees
Just when you think you have something figured out….. Just to try and sort this out….. I talked to Vickie a while back and I thought she told me that she wasn’t incubating the eggs, that she couldn’t find them, that she was just finding babies roaming around the yard. I might have been dreaming tho. I don’t know about stars. I don’t keep tortoises any more. The people I talked to put water in the bottom of the incubator, but don’t keep the vermiculite wet – Veterinarian Bill McCord (McCord’s box turtle, etc.) is one. I’m not saying I have this figured out. I have been noticing that a lot of my eggs go bad if they’re kept too moist. Obviously too dry can be bad also. I’m also thinking that all eggs are not created equal, that some species need more moist and some more dry and some are maybe more tolerant of conditions. Female spotted turtles will walk miles away from their swamps, uphill, to find a suitable place to lay their eggs. Again, my flavos (30) lay every single egg in a bone-dry spot in their outdoor setup – I thought that was telling me something. I hatch more flavo babies every year and every year I kept them drier and drier. Of course, it might be something else. Oh, I think I may have it figured out – west coast vs. the rest of the country? Or just Californians? 🙂 -Rick In fact I know 2 other people who use a very humid type environment for incubating Chinese/Star eggs. Vickie Wheeler has a ton of Chinese babies and she has an incubator set up in a large cooler with water in the bottom of at least 3″ she has the containers set above on a shelf with same 1 to 1. She doesn’t even cover the containers she has an aquarium heater in the water and it is set in the low 80’s. Stephan Rhoades has exactly the same setup for his Star eggs and they all keep hatching. Vickie modelgrafx@… wrote: