A couple months ago, my mother called me to ask me to come dig up this box turtle nest in the middle of the yard. She noticed the turtle excavating the nest while she was mowing, and she didn't want to damage the eggs in any way. So I found the nest site (not an easy thing) and dug up the little jewels, 5 in all, and placed them in my incubator which was currently cooking corn eggs.
Very quickly 2 of the eggs went bad, and upon a haphazard examination I determined they were infertile. No remains of an embryo that I saw. But the other three looked great. The weeks and days passed and I thought..are you guys ever gonna hatch? They finally did, 61 days later.
My husband and I took up landscaping for our new home. The previous owners planted beautiful azalea bushes where I didn't want and so we put them in the front of our house. While digging, my husband came across eggs...6 of them in all. They were harder than snake eggs and looked a lot like the box turtle eggs in the incubator. So I put them in there and waited..a week passes and they hatch, 2 of them went bad so I had 4 more box turtles to my name.
A woman at work, her son is obsessed with box turtles. He's got 15 in a huge outdoor enclosure in the yard and he babies them, even hand feeds them. So I let her son have one for his collection. And the others I think if I can get them eating I might keep them over the winter and release them out in the woods next spring.
Anyway, here's pictures. They're so damn cute! =D
The first four are all of the same hatchling, he was just so cute in his shell I just kept snapping pictures: He's still a little rambunctious thing. =P
These next couple are the same turtle as above, taken the next day when he finally emerged from his shell. He was a wiggly one, so I apologize if they may be out of focus. =P
And the whole "herd" as I call them: =P
Hope you enjoyed! More pictures later on.