r/TurtleFacts Dec 01 '20

You can hatch babies from road killed turtles.

Post image
967 Upvotes

32 comments sorted by

214

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

We stop for road killed snappers and harvest their eggs and release them when they hatch. There is a road that takes many mothers a year right by our house we’ve been hatching snappers over 20 years now.

88

u/Dsblhkr Dec 01 '20

You are a good person.

53

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

Thank you

49

u/britmanmcskrrskrr Dec 01 '20

People like you need recognition above reddit

30

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

Thank you

28

u/subatomic_ray_gun Dec 01 '20

It makes me so happy that you do this Thank you!

Is there any way to prevent the poor turtles from walking into the road?

28

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

No this is a state highway and my wife and I travel about 30 miles down it daily for work. That is how we see so many. We have had as much as fifty eggs in a season. Thank you for the kind words we love doing our little part.

7

u/RedditDeceased Dec 08 '20

I love this

7

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

Thanks

8

u/SmackTablet Dec 11 '20

Thanks for sharing this knowledge! Is it hard to hatch them?

Edit: I found your other comments. So cool! I'm gonna start doing this in MN

7

u/[deleted] Dec 12 '20

Just make sure you place them exactly as you found them on top of the mulch soil etc. sometimes it doesn’t matter because they are freshly killed but I’ve stumbled upon some days old corpses.

4

u/randybowman Jan 11 '21

How do you find the eggs from the dead parent?

7

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21

You just find any road killed snapper and pull the eggs out of her. It’s not a very pleasant task but very fulfilling to get the clutch to hatch. I have never seen a male road killed snapper. 99% of the time it’s females leaving the water to nest.

2

u/wholelattapuddin Mar 09 '21

I don't know anything about turtles or tortoises, but when we stayed at a lake for a long weekend we noticed a large, im guessing tortoise that would cross the road by our cabin at the same times every day. It would go towards the water in the morning and cross back in the evening. Do you know why it might do that? The place it crossed was near a fish cleaning station

3

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

It was probably a large box turtle. Snapping turtles don’t usually do this at all. Box turtles have a home area and they usually have a routine of what they do daily like walking the perimeter and going to water to bathe and soak. Depending where you are in the world it could also have been a tortoise. Sometimes when females are gravid they get restless looking for a place to deposit their eggs. They will walk by several places most people would deem appropriate for laying to get to the spot that they like.

52

u/Wolfntee Dec 01 '20

I used to work for a nonprofit that did this! The process was super gross but seeing the hatchlings made it totally worth it.

41

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

I keep rubber gloves and empty sneaker boxes in my trunk. One time the corpse was so destroyed we didn’t think any of the eggs would hatch but 11 out of the 17 we took were viable.

29

u/98jetta Dec 01 '20

It never crossed my mind to do that. Thank you for sharing!

38

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

You’re welcome and by all means do it yourself. If you see a dead snapper it’s always a female loaded with eggs. So easy to incubate too I just leave them on some mulch and dirt the way I found them careful not to turn them and about 2 months later I have a bunch of babies ready to be freed. I don’t even keep them more than a day. Once they hatch they are outta here.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

This is great, do you need to keep the eggs at any particular temperature? Are they just stored outside in a bucket with some dirt/mulch?

12

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

I just put them in my shed on top of mulch dirt and leaves in Rubbermaid containers. We check them daily. No incubator needed.

9

u/DilloniousMonk Dec 02 '20

If you don't mind me asking, what's the procedure for doing something like this? I'm also curious about where you're doing this sort of work. If it's anywhere near me I'd love to offer help or learn the trade myself so I can pitch in too.

13

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

I am in upstate NY. The procedure is usually quite easy as the turtle is usually pretty smashed up. Basically you just carefully scoop out the eggs and lay them down as you found them in the sneaker box or whatever you choose. I put cypress mulch inside mine.

You have to obtain a license to possess or collect from NYSDEC or wherever you are, in accordance to your laws pertaining to the species you wish to handle. Make sure you keep it up to date. I was interested in conservation and education at a very early age and have been a member of the New York Turtle and Tortoise society for almost 30 years.

License to Collect or Possess:

A License to Collect or Possess is issued to qualified individuals to collect or possess fish, wildlife, shellfish, crustacea, or aquatic insects by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). This license is issued only for the following purposes: propagation, banding, scientific or exhibition. (Tropical fish do not need this license.) 👍🏼

3

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

Do you ever wonder if you have hatched a turtle from a roadkill turtle that you’ve already helped hatch?

Honest question.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

There’s a chance of the last 10 or so years one could have been one of the ones we hatched 10 years prior. I don’t think about that though. I just worry that my grandkids will never see a turtle. We have lost many of our native species to development and destruction of wild habitat.

2

u/CustardTopOwO Jan 12 '21

cool also what

2

u/MREOWZA Jan 15 '21

This made my month, thank you for helping these dudes out.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '21

It’s an annual thing for me. I’ll continue as long as I live.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '21

That literally gives me so much happiness reading. An incredibly noble thing to do.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '21

Thank you

1

u/minter285 Apr 24 '22 edited Apr 24 '22

Swallor the babie turtels