General Care Discussion :: nesting update

[mackadocious]

so i made some dry sandy dirt accessible to patsy's tank about a week ago now in hopes that she'd lay the last of her eggs if she has anymore left....one of my guys has finally made it up to the tree house i created for them as i found dirt floating in the water....

i'm very happy to see this, though while i was improving the set up i came to the realization that the "male" i have might be a female as well and could be the one laying eggs.....their plastrons end at different lengths around the tail area, but their tails are approximately the same size as are their claws......the "male" is 6" and 4-6 years old, so definitely sexually mature right??......do males always grow the long claws???

and whichever one was laying eggs has laid 5 so far, all within 1 week of each other.....they're both still eating regularly, swimming periodically, basking, etc......and it's first clutch.....anyone have numbers of eggs for their turtles' first clutches??.....the vet i talked to said could easily be a small number like that and they're both acting okay now, though kinda hard to tell if there's much goin on or not.....

[mackadocious]

so here's a pic of mah man....err woman??

[Pizza]

Yes, six inches is a clear sign of a mature turtle, RES are distinguishable around 4 inches, any more should show it well. A picture of the tail would be nice.

Unless a male is having health problems/deformities, the front claws should always be long, unless they're broken.

[mackadocious]

i'll try, though they both don't seem to keen on me peekin at their business....hehe.....though when i looked earlier when takin the pics, they have pretty much the same size tails and the cloacal opening appears to be about the same distance from the shell--approx 1 centimeter i would say....

[mackadocious]

okay did my best.....



as you can see, not really much difference.....

[adam85491]

This seems dumb, but after you get all those eggs, you surely do get turtles, right? It seems kind of hard to take care of that many turtles, so what do you guys do with them?

[mackadocious]

throw them in the trash......they definitely aren't fertilized, but even if they were they'd be a pain in the [---] to incubate, not to mention that there's more than enough res to go around....

[industrial_girl_2000]

The pic you posted of the turtle with the small claws is definitely a girl.

And yes, the boys always have unusually long front claws (no need to cut them....it's just the way they are).