Saturday, June 7, 2014

Russian tortoise Baby#4 hatched today!

Russian tortoise baby#4 made an appearance today! 

POP! And she was out!
Today was day#60 for the second batch of eggs, so I peeked into the incubator window with a flashlight. What did I see? Little eyeballs staring back at me! 

Baby must have been sitting in the incubator coming out of her egg for quite a while (could have been since yesterday), because her egg just about disintegrated in my hands when I picked it up to move her into the little bin. She had thoroughly shredded it and crawled right out of the egg into my hand.

Baby#4 is a beautiful, healthy little Russian tortoise. 
Welcome to the world, baby#4! She's happy, healthy, and has a tiny splitty scute. Scutes are the little partitions in a tortoise's shell, and a 'normal' tortoise has a set number of them. Occasionally (based on incubation temperature, genetics, and other factors), a tortoise hatches with a few extra scutes. This does not harm the tortoise at all, it just make sit unique. 
Freshly out of the egg, still with a fold in its belly and a small yolk sac.
I included a pic of her belly, because I thought you would like to see how the babies are folded in the egg. She will absorb that bit of yolk sac in the next day.

I still have 2 more eggs from this clutch in the incubator. I can't wait for them to hatch as well! 

I made a little collage of Baby#4

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