Red Eared Sliders are some of the most common and beloved pets in the world. If you own a female, it’s important to know how many eggs she will lay and what you can do with them.
Red Eared Slider turtles usually lay between 10 and 30 eggs. The eggs are oval in shape and have a softshell. A female Red Eared Slider can lay up to 5 clusters of eggs per year.
Red Eared Sliders eggs are quite different from the common chicken eggs, they are soft-shelled, they have a different shape and they function in a completely different way. So let’s take a closer look at turtle eggs, and then we’ll see what you have to do if your red eared slider laid eggs.
Red Eared Slider Turtle Eggs
The first thing that you should know is that female turtles will lay eggs every year, it doesn’t matter if there isn’t any male around to fertilize them. So if you own a female Red Eared Slider you can expect her to lay eggs a couple of times per year, what you can do with them we’ll discuss in the next chapter of the article.
Now back to the eggs themselves. Red eared slider eggs are oval soft-shelled eggs, this means that their shell is not completely hard like that of a chicken egg. It’s actually more similar in consistency to a hard-boiled egg without a shell.
A turtle egg is not only a shell that will protect the baby turtle until it’s fully developed, it also contains a lot of nutrients that will allow the baby turtle to develop. Baby turtles will rely on these nutrients for a few days after they hatch.
Baby red eared sliders will have a small yolk sack, from the egg, that is attached to their plastron, this will feed them through their first weeks of life until they are able to find their own food.
In this photo, you can see the yolk sack (the small white bag) attached to the plastron of the turtle.
How to Take Care of Turtle Eggs
What you should do with the eggs greatly depends on one question. Are the eggs fertilized?
Just like chickens, turtles lay eggs periodically, but this doesn’t mean that babies will always come out of them. If there is no male to fertilize the eggs there is absolutely no chance that babies will come out of them.
So if there is no male around to fertilize the eggs, then you can simply throw them away, or leave them where they are. Red eared sliders have the tendency to eat their own unfertilized eggs.
If you have a male and a female Red Eared Slider, then most likely the eggs are fertilized. At this point, you have two possibilities. You can either throw them away or take care of them.
Taking care of turtle eggs is not too hard, but you have to be very careful about the way you handle them, and the temperature at which they are kept.
Here is a quick guide on how you should proceed.
The first thing that you should do is to buy an incubator or make your own. If you want to make your own incubator I will provide a link at the end of the article that will tell you to step by step what you have to do.
After you get the incubator ready you have to mark the top of the eggs, turtle embryos attach themselves to the top of the egg when they start developing. Turning the egg upside down will hurt the embryo and no hatchling will come out. So before touching and moving the egg in any way, you want to take a marker and gently put a mark on the top of the egg.
Dig a few holes in the soil of the incubator and place them there. The eggs should hatch in about 50 days, give or take 2 days. Never pick up the turtle eggs after placing them in the incubator. Turtle eggs are fragile from the start, but as they get further into the developing process, the embryos will start absorbing nutrients from the eggshell and as a result, the eggs will become thinner and a lot more fragile, just trying to pick them up can easily break them.
The gender of a turtle is determined by the amount of heat that they were exposed to when they were in the eggs. A higher temperature means that more females will be born, if the temperature is lower then more males will be born. If you want to get as close as possible to an equal number of males and females, then you should make sure that the temperature is around 84 degrees Fahrenheit ( 29 degrees Celsius ).
If the temperature goes higher than 95 degrees Fahrenheit ( 35 degrees Celsius ), the eggs will spoil. So be careful not to go over, or too close to that temperature.
After about 45 days some cracks might start appearing in the eggs, this is a good sign and it means that the baby turtles are about to hatch. When this happens you should prepare a container and fill it with paper towels, and have some water close by, you will need them after the eggs hatch.
As soon as you see that one of the baby turtles gets out of the egg, you should put some water in the container with the paper towels in it, the water shouldn’t be overflowing, just put enough to get the towels wet. After that, you should pick up the baby turtle and put it in that container. This is where it will spend the next few days until the yolk sack is completely absorbed.
Now you should have a bunch of healthy baby Red Eared Sliders. What you do with them after this is completely up to you.
If you want to see how to make your own incubator, or you want a more in-depth guide, you can check out this article where I cover the whole process in greater detail: How to Take Care of Turtle Eggs.
Do Red Eared Slider Turtles Take Care of Their Eggs After They Are Laid?
Most turtles don’t take care of their babies or their eggs. The reason why they don’t take care of them is a completely different subject, but in short, I can tell you that they wouldn’t be able to do too much to defend the eggs, and in the process, they will most definitely get hurt, and will most likely attract attention to the eggs as well. So it’s better that they don’t stay around.
Even if red eared slider turtles don’t stay around and guard their eggs, they still do their best to protect them. And they do this by hiding them. When they lay the eggs they don’t simply dump them in a random place and leave. Turtles spend a lot of time trying to find a safe place to dig a hole to lay their eggs. After the exhausting process of laying eggs, they will do their best to cover them with dirt, leaves, and anything that they can find that will hide the eggs.
In general, turtles survive by hiding and by making themselves hard to notice. So they do the same thing for their eggs.
Here is a video of a red eared slider turtle laying eggs:
Common Questions
Are turtle eggs soft? Different species of turtles lay different types of eggs, most of them are hard-shelled, but some of them have a leather-like texture.
Do turtles mate for life? No, turtles will not mate for life. Every mating season they will look for a new partner to mate with. It is also very common for turtles to have various partners during one mating season.
How often do turtles lay eggs? Most aquatic and land turtles will only lay eggs once a year. Sea turtles will usually lay eggs 4 to 10 times a year.
Do turtles eat their own eggs? Turtles will eat their own eggs if the eggs are not fertilized. If the eggs are fertilized they will not eat them.
Final Thoughts
I hope this article answered all of your questions regarding red eared
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A red slider turtle laid its eggs in my front yard this morning. it is only two feet away from the street. Is there a good way to protect them from the street traffic?
Hello Marye,
This is quite a delicate situation, but there are two things that you can do. I have an article called How to Take Care of Turtle Eggs (Easy Guide With Pictures), there you will find instructions on how to safely move the eggs. If you want to take care of them you can follow the guide, but if you just want to safely move them somewhere else, just take a look at the beginning and follow those steps, but instead of placing them in a incubator, you can make hole in the ground in a safer place.
red slider layed eggs, in backyard. do i removed them ? if so after how many days
You can remove them at any moment if you want. But leaving them there won’t cause any harm to you or your backyard. As soon as the eggs hatch the baby turtles will leave your backyard.
Hi
I have a red ear slider who recently laid 15 eggs. I collected the eggs and stored them in my home made incubator but now I’m noticing her behavior is similar to how she was before she laid them, is she possibly laying more soon?
Turtles can lay eggs multiple times a year, so yes, your turtle might lay more eggs soon.