ENDANGERED TURTLES LAY EGGS IN OUR BACKYARD!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well I didn't get much sleep last night because nesting season has officially kicked off here with our Turtles and we had two very endangered species of turtle lay eggs last night so I was up late watching our cameras trying to figure out what's going on where they're going to settle and how many of them are going to do it by the time they had finished I was able to come out here and mark the areas and now I'm up early with a container to dig these eggs up safely and get them into incubation so come on foreign [Music] okay I'm right at the designated nesting area that I built for the turtles in this pen and I have one of my Arlo cameras right here that keeps an eye on it for me when I'm not home or when like I said last night I'm just trying to go to sleep and I'm watching it to see what might be happening on this mound right here so what I've done is I've made kind of a bare area with low-lying vegetation around it and some logs and then the vegetation starts to get taller As you move away from it and it also gets blasted with morning sun and it has Sun pretty much always and that's what a female turtle is going to look for as a good area to put her eggs okay so I came out here and I just put these random dog fence Flags so that I knew where to dig the next morning because as you can see it's almost well really it is impossible to be able to tell where these Turtles laid their eggs because they are programmed to know to hide them from predation so these Turtles don't know that they're in a captive management situation so their instinct tells them I got to put these eggs in the ground I gotta do it at night and because there'll be less eyes on them you would think and I gotta try to disguise The Nest as much as possible now the species that we're about to dig eggs up for are two as I said very endangered this is the North American wood turtle and that is the blandings turtle two species that we have been very fortunate to get Wildlife agency approval to work with and even breed here so in the nighttime footage I was able to see exactly where these Turtles were which allowed me to put the flag just behind them so that means our wood turtle nest should be somewhere right about here and what I need to do is just push around with my fingers not too hard and I'll know once I've reached the nest cavity because my finger will sink in like that okay so this should be it right here man even though I could feel that divot they really packed these nests in so it's easy to break an egg you've got to be very careful there's the first egg take a look at that that is our first North American wood turtle egg of the season all right I'm gonna pull them out one by one place the wood turtle eggs on one side and the blanding's on another because they're going to look very similar a lot of turtle eggs are leathery shelled wood Turtles and landings turtles are no exception to that so it's easy to tear them that egg holds the future of a precious North American wood turtle in it one thing that's really interesting about North American Wood turtles that unlike the vast majority of turtle species the sex of them is not determined by the temperature that the egg is incubated at it's determined just like ours is by chromosomes so there is no way for me to influence the gender of these baby wood turtles by messing around with the incubation temperature however with the blanding's turtle eggs the lower temperatures are going to produce males whereas the higher temperatures will produce females 12 eggs 12 eggs from that hard-working mother North American wood turtle which is a pretty standard clutch they can lay anywhere from six all the way up to 16 eggs in a single clutch and typically the North American wood turtle is only going to lay one clutch in a single season whereas a blandings turtle can lay sometimes too so I'm going to cover this Nest back up similar like I've done in other videos about nesting because this is a prime area so another mother turtle is most likely going to want to use this area so it's good for me to cover that Nest up now we can move on to the blanding's nest okay so again again that nighttime footage that tells me that this Turtle nested right here which is why I put the flag right here what's interesting is this blandings Turtle utilized this piece of Driftwood to help disguise her nest so she decided that the temperature and humidity and consistency of the ground were so ideal right here up against and just underneath this piece of Driftwood don't underestimate them they are incredibly smart and instinctively they are capable of so much this little blandings turtle is actually our smallest adult female and she typically lays two clutches each in this in a season um six eggs each so I'm expecting there to be six eggs in this clutch let's find out okay uh she really went back in here [Music] okay I feel the first egg and what's interesting is you know these eggs are only a couple inches down it's not like they really go that deep there are some turtles that go much deeper and even actually put their whole bodies underground and get to that in another video but here we go here is the first blanding's turtle egg look at that you see how similar it is to that wood turtle egg so it's important for me to keep them separated so I don't confuse them so I've got a towel right here in the middle separating the two clutches so interesting I only got two eggs in this clutch it's rare you know what that could mean one of two things that could mean she's going to do three clutches this year or she's gonna do two in the first and the rest of them in the second I really don't know or it could have something to do with the fact that we had such a mild winter I mean I could have been in a t-shirt pretty much the entire winter this year the reason a winter is important is because these Turtles are on an annual cycle and each season triggers certain behaviors so when the turtles get to cool down that much and then when they warm back up it reinvigorates them to breed a lot of scientific research points to the fact that I have something to do with the sperm inside the male and the fertile fertilization processing there's so much to be learned about these animals but in this particular case it's a testament that heat is not always what reptiles absolutely need what it depends on the species and a lot of species really rely on cold too and blanding's turtles can take it so cold that they will be active even breeding underneath a thin layer of ice all right so now what I need to do is get these eggs inside and we're going to go ahead and throw a moist paper towel over each clutch so that they don't dry out I want to go ahead and look in here for Mom both moms and make sure that they're doing okay it is a very exhausting thing for them to do to lay these eggs so I just want to make sure they're not weakened and they're okay and that they're resting properly and they check out and then we're going to get these eggs into incubation foreign this is Mama right here she laid two eggs she still feels incredibly heavy so I'm sure she's developing more and I'm really curious to see what is going to come of that but she looks awesome she's definitely hungry so we're gonna get a good meal in her get her to replenish some of that calcium loss and no complaints she looks awesome so let's not keep her out long just a quick inspection and uh you can go back to life [Music] and here is Mama wood turtle now I know it was these two turtles because I of course know my turtles very well and I always joke around with Casey saying you can stand across the property and hold the turtle up and I'll know exactly who it is and this is a female that I've actually raised from juvenile she was only four inches when I got her I'm not exactly sure how old she is but she's probably only around 12 or 13 years old which is very young for a wood turtle and she looks awesome too just like the blandings but that was an exhausting night for her and she's been hanging out here up against this grass in the shade and I'm gonna get some food into her later today but she looks awesome she really really does foreign [Music] I realized that Casey had just bought some fresh raspberries which is one of a wood turtle's favorite food items so I'm gonna just try to get some food into this lady right now come here mama [Music] whoa see how hungry she is that took a whole lot last night 12 eggs you probably feel so light there you go there you go watch that finger please well that's it for it for her it's a wrap for the 2023 season for this Turtle but she's only the very first of the North American Wood Turtles to nest for this season so your job is done you get to just enjoy the summer eat whatever you want bask hang out interact and just be an awesome but sadly endangered turtle species [Music] thank you so a lot of people ask how do I know our Turtles are grab it and by grab it I mean pregnant because they're carrying eggs but they don't actually give live birth well obviously weight is going to have something to do with it and this Turtle right here feels very heavy but with certain species what you're able to do is actually something called palpating where you don't force it let the turtle stick its back legs out on its own but what you do is you feel in front of each back leg see where my finger is right there and you feel up into the body cavity to see if you can feel eggs and well this wood turtle was gravid and folks as it turns out she has laid her eggs this is not the same turtle that we just showed you and collected eggs from so now we need to head back over to the nesting area to see if I can find her eggs so that something like a mole doesn't get them because that's a very real threat for both captive and wild turtles don't go trying to palpate turtles if you don't know what you're doing and never do it to a wild turtle but that is a sure way to know if a turtle is in fact carrying eggs and you know what you're doing seriously never a dull moment here this is my life so now I have to somehow find a nest that I have no idea of its whereabouts but this is the designated nesting area and our wood Turtles always choose it they like upper areas that are Sandy it's just their preferred area to nest in the wild too so I'm just going to start carefully feeling around I really hate to disrupt this but I got to do it now and get it back in order because there's going to be more wood Turtles looking to Nest this very evening [Music] well I hate to admit it but I can't find the nest so it's best to just leave it be because it looks like Mommy did a really good job at hiding it hopefully no moles find it we have successfully hatched turtles in this Pond before uh blanding's turtles and spotted Turtles and even painted turtles so I do have Faith and Hope that these wood turtles will successfully hatch on their own so stay tuned guys because come late July August you might be seeing one of our uploads one of those weeks saying we found baby wood Turtles but day's not over we have more to do [Music] all right so we typically check for the turtle eggs early in the morning and then again in the evening as far as when the females are going to Nest but right now it's prime time for tortoises and I saw an Eastern Herman's pushing around and if you've been following our videos lately we've been getting a lot of Herman's eggs and sure enough here she is and she's about to finish up thank you it's so amazing how they are so careful I mean if you think about a turtle or tortoise it's a rugged reptile they have hard scales and scoots and very sharp nails yet these mothers rarely if ever break one of their own eggs and unlike the leathery shell turtle eggs we just dug up these are brittle shelled like a chicken egg tortoise eggs so this mama here is in her trance she's not disturbed by us I just got to keep an eye and let her finish up but this is a fun day already we're really getting a lot of eggs and I'm guessing there's going to be even more come evening time once the heat starts to subside so it looks like she's got five eggs out right now this female typically lays six in her first clutch and this is her first clutch of the Season she'll do at least one more clutch in about two to three weeks and then possibly even a third into July and uh yeah one two I think there's five in there so she's still moving the eggs around perfectly positioning them it's it's amazing that she could do that or that she even knows she's doing it with her back feet and then she'll cover it up but one thing I want to point out guys we're in a drought we usually have a lot of rain this time of year which is so beneficial to everybody and it is bone dry I mean it looks like she's pulling dust out of the ground still she found a way she found an area that has the appropriate humidity and some kind of moisture in there to put those eggs but as soon as she's done we'll let her feel accomplished and we'll get the eggs dug up and uh put upstairs along with those turtle eggs [Music] so that whole process took her about an hour roughly and you can see the spot right there sometimes they don't do that great of a job of covering it up she didn't really use any debris she just kind of moved off it and it's easy for me to spot of course I also remember the area so just like we just did I'm going to carefully excavate the eggs and it's time to get everybody into incubation [Music] all right so I got my eggs up here in our incubation room and all I'm doing is just taking a wet paper towel and cleaning the eggs off a bit so this way there's no bacteria that forms and I'll be able to see if they're fertile because a white spot will form right on the top of these eggs and then they will start to band or chalk and then they will completely turn bone white and that means the egg is in fact fertile and in development and if we candle it after a couple weeks we will of course see veins and then an embryo too so what I'm also going to do is I'm just going to take a regular pencil and for 30 years now this is how I've marked my eggs I just write the species and the date or maybe even the mother if it's something specific I need to remember on the top of the egg and once they go into the incubator they are no longer turned like a chicken or other bird egg would be reptile eggs have to stay still once they start development after they've initially been laid it's okay to turn them but usually within 36 hours sometimes a little bit longer that's it no more movement so I'm gonna grab one of the containers and start placing them in [Music] so what I do for wood turtle eggs because the clutches are usually big as you can see again 12 eggs here I'll mark the first egg and the last egg because then after that last egg I will put in another clutch from a different animal and mark the first and last egg of those two there's nothing wrong with marking all the eggs but it's just kind of a waste of time given that they're all in the same clutch so here we go here's the last egg so I gotta mark it and you got to be very careful with these leathery shelled eggs with a pencil tip very lightly you press because you don't want to puncture them [Music] so I'm just marking these two Blanding zags real quick and I always keep the species separate so blandings will go in one container Woods will go in the other I'm not hopeful for these Landing Zacks there's something a little bit weird about them they're a little bit over calcified which is weird because this is actually early for them to start laying so it's not like this female has been carrying them too long so I wonder if these are just kind of a fluke early Nest or something and then she will actually still lay her two clutches of six eggs but we're of course gonna give them a chance so into that vermiculite they go expose the top a little bit and we'll see hopefully they're uh hopefully they're fertile oh this tray is heavy and well that's because I'm out of room in it thank you these are all of our Herman's eggs so far and I'm gonna have to start a new tray for this clutch that we just got but something really cool that I want to show you you'll notice that the eggs are forming that White Spot see that right there that was an egg laid on 5 26 May 26th and it's forming a white spot once the egg gets a little bit older it starts to look like this like a band this one was laid on the 19th then if we go back to the 15th these first eggs are completely bone white so these eggs are all fertile all right so I'm just marking these eggs putting the date on them and I'm going to get them set up and I'm excited because there's a lot more nesting to come it is only May June is upon us which is the real Rush of nesting but not just for the reptiles that we keep and breed here at Garden State tortoise but also with our conservation work so stay tuned for a lot of videos about that if you guys appreciated this video If you learned something if you enjoyed it make sure you check out this video next foreign [Music]

Channel: Garden State Tortoise

Views: 13,284

Keywords: Turtle eggs, How to incubate turtle eggs, turtle egg incubation tips, reptile egg incubation tutorial, egg incubators good and bad, Do turtles lay eggs?, Egg laying mammals, baby turtle care info, best turtle egg incubation tips, Pet turtle care tips, baby turtle care tips, garden for baby tortoise, baby tortoise egg incubation, turtle egg incubator, garden state tortoise, wood turtle, Hermann’s tortoise, Blanding’s turtle, Otis the turtle

Id: 9QdsfvaH3FY

Length: 18min 33sec (1113 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023