| Yvonne G |
10-07-2021 03:29 PM |
YES!!! Normally they (I should say 'she') lay in July, but a couple months ago my partner, Will, who lives in SoCal, bought a pair of Mee from someone here in town. This new pair is just past adolescence and the female has been laying for two years. I put the new male in his own yard but added the female to my group. The fellow we bought them from raised them from hatchlings and they always lived by themselves with no other tortoise contact, so I didn't quarantine. I think it was the new blood in her yard that caused MY female to be interested in nesting earlier than normal this year.
She started scraping the ground in front of an outside lean-to shelter in early June, and managed to create quite a 'hill' inside the shelter, consisting of dirt, sticks, and leaves. Once she was quiet, and staying on top of the hill I figured she was guarding. So when I found her off the nest I took my garden rake and started pulling the nest material off the hill. I got all the way down to ground level and no eggs.
Several days later I was sitting in my recliner, watching TV and I kept hearing thumping and bumping, sounds a horse makes when its cast in its stall. It took quite a while for the sounds to reach into my brain and actually register, but when the light bulb went off over my head I realized I needed to go see what all the noise was.
My female Mee was back in the shelter, on top of the hill, and there were eggs behind her. She was trying to cover up the eggs, using a scraping motion with her back legs. Problem being, every time she scraped instead of scraping fresh material she was scraping the pile of eggs.
Lucky for me, she was in the zone, and didn't realize I was behind her trying to rescue the eggs that weren't broken. I don't remember off hand the exact number, but I have quite a few good-looking eggs in my incubator. . . around 30 or so. They've been in there long enough to see that they look pretty darned good and I'm very hopeful this is going to be a good year for Manouria eggs.
This is also the first year I was able to see Russians nesting. I have two very large females and one normal-sized female, in with one male. I noticed nesting, so I kept my eye on their yard throughout the coming days. All three of the females laid eggs after the three of them each made several test nests. I had three containers of Russian eggs in the incubator, with four different clutches of eggs. The biggest female nested twice, giving me nine eggs.
On my birthday I looked in the incubator and found two of the cutest little Russian babies! Then yesterday there was another one. They hatched in just two months. There's a couple more pipping today.
I hope I'm as lucky with hatching the Manouria eggs!!
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