General Care Discussion :: My Gravid Female Experience (so far)

[agengo]

Hi all,

I have two yellow bellied sliders, Left Eye (male) and Houdini (female). They're both 5 years old. Some may remember Left Eye when he prolapsed his penis and it wouldn't retract back in. Well, a snip snip and after a few weeks he was back to his randy little self.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Houdini was was not eating, was restless and trying to destroy everything in the tank. Based on my research I figured she was gravid. I bought a 48 gallon tub and filled with a peat/sand mixture and wet it down. Of course, all she wanted to do was get out of it.

Yesterday I took her to the vet for xrays and she has five eggs. The vet wasn't able to provide too many helpful answers based on the fact that it's different for every turtle. Knowing we will be going out of town in two weeks I wanted to see if we could speed things along. The vet did a round of calcium and half a dose of oxytocin. Houdini didn't lay anything at the office, so we gave her the rest of the oxytocin and I took her home and modified the nesting box with more moisture and getting it warm to the 90s. I'm going to leave her in there until I get home from work today.

I found one egg this morning. How long does it usually take to pass the entire clutch? I'm expecting more vet trips with this one...

Thanks!
Abby

[steve]

Very cool. She should have laid all the eggs together at the same time, was the one you found actually buried?

[agengo]

That's what I was afraid of. She only laid the one and it was not buried, it was under her and on top of the dirt.

[steve]

Was she in a trance like state? Did she hit the bottom of the tub?

[agengo]

She laid that egg overnight while we were sleeping. I heard back from the vet and he believes she may have several more weeks until the rest are in position to be laid. But he said I'm doing everything right at this point and to make sure she has calcium and we will xray again in a few weeks.

[steve]

Alright, keep us updated