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Okay, well i have a female RES named Lois and thet lady where i bought her said that she was the youngest one there. She is about 4 inches. I am kinda afraid because I won't know how to take care of the eggs! I know I'm thinking far ahead but I want everything to go smoothly! So like, do I have to do anything for the eggs? Or will the RES do everything for them?

Chuck'em. Seriously. Unless she's kept with a male they won't be any good anyway. You'll want to build a nesting area but that's a long way off yet. I think they need to be 6 or 7 inches before they can lay (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't know about size Jen, but I've was under the impression that age wise, it was 3 years old. I'm thinking that at age three mine aren't going to be that big. Does that mean at age three I don't have to worry about a nesting site? Can I dream?

Also, I agree with pitching the eggs. This world is already overpopulated with RES needing homes. People get them and don't know what to do with them, so they get released into the wild causing it's own set of problems. Rescue places are overcrowded, and there are tanks of them stacked on one another in petshops around the world. There really isn't a need to be breeding more.

6 to 7 inches is a good mature size for a wild female RES, but captive RES mature faster (some more so than others). So it could be sooner than that. I'd check Steve's and Spookster's recent posts on egg laying because they contain some good info.

My female RES is 3 yrs old... she's slightly over 6". She was overfed earlier but is doing fine... though she is still extremely good at begging. I seriously didn't think she was going to have eggs this year but I knew it was a possibility and I had an area picked out for her (which she didn't like).

fggy82, are you sure you have a female? A female will not protect the nest or check it, though if they are forced into laying them in water then they might eat them.

Sexual maturity is more equated with size for captive turtles. A smaller female can lay eggs, but if she's mated, they will be less viable (and without a mate, they're not viable at all).