# First clutch for the season



## Flaviemys purvisi (Jan 12, 2019)

Hey all, my first clutch for the season is in the incubator. An exciting one too as this is my 7 year old _Chelodina longicollis'_ first clutch ever. She's been acting out of sorts now for close to a month and noticeably heavy when held. I tossed up getting her X-rayed last weekend as you cannot feel the presence of eggs in gravid long-necks by palpating their hind limb pockets as you can with all short-necked species as ELN and all other long-necks carry their eggs higher up in their carapace. I decided against the X-ray knowing that if eggs were present and in stage 2 of development, the embryos would die. Today when I got home from work she was hauled out onto the basking dock in her aquarium and making digging actions/motions with her hind legs. I grabbed a 20 kilo bag of sand, dumped it into a storage container, wet it down with warm water and grabbed half a dozen shovel fulls of dirt from the back yard and mixed it in to create a nice laying substrate. I placed the tub on the patio in the last light of the setting sun and grabbed the turtle from the tank and plonked her in. Within 5 minutes of pacing, she settled down and started excavating her nest chamber.



25 mins later she began back-filling and compacting the nest chamber. Then she used her body like a jack hammer/compactor, raising herself up high and body slamming down onto the nest to compact it.


You can clearly see the compacted area of the nest chamber on the left hand side of the tub.

Now I returned her to her indoor aquarium to join her smaller boyfriend and proceeded to dig up the nest and see how many eggs she laid.


Slowly and surely not to damage the hard-shelled eggs. Placed into a container of vermiculite dampened with 28 degree water at the weight ratio of 1:1


7 eggs in total, not a bad first clutch given she's only 18cm straight carapace length, 10cm short of fully grown. She will most likely lay another 1 or 2 clutches yet this season.

Nest fully excavated.



The eggs have been placed into my turtle egg incubator set at 28 degrees C.





Now the anxious wait begins. The eggs, if fertile will band up within the next 24 hours to 10 days. If they turn out to be fertile, they will hatch anywhere in the next 65 - 122 days. The female was paired with the male back in October of last year so they have over wintered together and a lot of courtship and mating was witnessed by me but there's no guarantee this was a successful pairing... yet.

The female on the left, male on the right catching some sun together last weekend.



Fingers crossed! Woo!!
[doublepost=1541826886,1541754188][/doublepost]OK so after approximately 21 hours of incubation, 3 of the 7 _Chelodina longicollis_ eggs have started to band (chalk up). Am stoked. Hopefully the other 4 follow suit in the next day or so!
[doublepost=1541999081][/doublepost]Day 3 of incubation has revealed a 4th egg starting to band up. Things are looking good so far, 4 viable eggs developing and 3 still with a question mark hanging over them... They have 7 days left...



[doublepost=1542605491][/doublepost]Day 10 of incubation today and the deadline for eggs that haven't yet banded. There's been no change since day 3 (apart from the 4 already viable eggs further developing), the remaining 3 never banded and will be removed from the incubator in the next hour, cleaned and preserved in a jar of methylated spirits and labelled. I've never been able to simply discard turtle eggs.  They preserve well and will just form part of my turtle related smalls collection.  I'll take 4 out of 7 for her very first clutch. 

Some preserved Saw-shelled turtle eggs from the 2015 season that never banded after 10 days of incubation.


[doublepost=1547193956][/doublepost]Well today is day number 62 of incubation for the 4 out of 7 viable_ Chelodina longicollis_ eggs in clutch #1 and there's movement at the station! With neonates emerging on and after day #65, it won't be long now. 



Hatchling _Chelodina longicollis_ are extremely small and completely defenceless with heads and necks far too large to retract into their tiny shells.


[doublepost=1547241705][/doublepost]Just after midnight this morning (day #63) the first little one made its entrance into the world. 

After a long struggle to free itself from the egg, it's exhausted. Note the carapace (top half of the shell) is still very soft and curled over from being cramped in the confines of the egg. This uncurls and corrects itself within a few hours. There is still a bit of the egg yolk attached to the plastron (this is completely normal) that needs to be absorbed by the hatchy and this can take a week or even 2. During this time they will not feed.



3 hours after hatching and the little one's carapace has uncurled and he/she is clambering around all over his/her yet unhatched brothers and sisters. I carefully plucked it up for a quick snap for a size comparison next to a coin. 



When compared to many other reptiles, it really is a wonder that in the wild ANY hatchling turtles make it at all. They are so helpless and fragile. In the wild this one would have to dig itself out of a 6 inch deep compacted nest chamber that could be anywhere from 100-500m from the water. Blades of grass would be like an impassable forest of trees and potential predators coming from all directions.... Literally just a few hungry ants or a spider could stop this hatchy in its tracks. 

The one in a thousand that do make it past their 3rd birthday can go on to live for 100 years.


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## Benno87 (Jan 13, 2019)

That is so awesome. Thanks heaps for posting this detailed thread loved it. Can’t believe how tiny the hatchy is.


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## Mick666 (Jan 14, 2019)

That's so cool.


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Jan 22, 2019)

Now 10 days since the 1st egg in clutch 1 hatched and 6 days since #2 was hatched (forcefully by me), number 3 has decided to come join his siblings in the big wide world! This egg got noticeably bigger than the other 4, almost twice the size so I am kinda hoping for twins. Not uncommon in the _Chelodina longicollis_ arena. 

Peekaboo! Come say say hello little one/s.


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## Allan (Jan 22, 2019)

Great thread Kev, keep posting. What is the carapace length of your female?


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Jan 22, 2019)

Allan said:


> Great thread Kev, keep posting. What is the carapace length of your female?


Hi mate, last measure a few months back she was pushing 18cm. She herself hatched in 2010 so she's only a sub-adult herself. Still got some growing to do, she could reach 26cm SCL over the next decade and start to knock out 3 clutches of 14-24 eggs per season.
[doublepost=1548152558,1548141956][/doublepost]No twins, but another happy little dude having his first swim!


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## MANNING (Jan 22, 2019)

Flaviemys purvisi said:


> No twins, but another happy little dude having his first swim!



little BIG dude
Or did it just happen to be a big egg. 

I wouldn't have ever thought twins were a thing. Amazing! That's for sharing matter


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Jan 23, 2019)

MANNING said:


> little BIG dude
> Or did it just happen to be a big egg.
> 
> I wouldn't have ever thought twins were a thing. Amazing! That's for sharing matter


The egg just swelled more than the others, he's the same size, 10c piece size.  Yeah twin hatchlings turtles are quite common, especially with ELN's.


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## Shire pythons (Jan 23, 2019)

Awesome! Its seems a miracle they could survive in the wild


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Feb 3, 2019)

First feed for the new midgets tonight... good old bloodworms to get the feeding response initiated...



Once they were observed slamming those, it was straight back into their tub and introduced to teeny tiny baby woodies from my woody bin. They were quick to hunt down the woodies.



Baby turtles...
So bloody cute. 
[doublepost=1548449846,1548322690][/doublepost]When breeding snake-necked turtles, you need to think in advance of what you're going to feed the tiny little beggars when they arrive as the food needs to be tiny and live. 3 weeks before they started hatching I placed 6 half full buckets of rainwater around the garden in the hopes of getting a few mozzies breeding. Well it's harvest time. 


This is exactly what the little ones need and they're diving right in. 


[doublepost=1549146806][/doublepost]Little ones are coming along nicely, a bit of outside sun time with their dad. 



Soaking up that natural UVB.


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