How to Tell if Your Turtle Is Pregnant (with Pictures)

A few years ago my turtle was acting a little strange lately so I did some research and talked to a vet and I found out that she is pregnant. In this article, I am going to share with you everything that I found out during my research and from my talk with the vet. After this article, you are going to be able to find out if your turtle is pregnant or not, and if she is what you have to do.

You can easily tell if a turtle is pregnant by looking for visual and behavioral changes. A pregnant turtle will have small bumps from the eggs on her plastron. A pregnant turtle will also display behavioral changes like changes in her diet, basking habits and she will try to escape the tank.

Before getting into more details about the visual and behavioral changes I want to remind you that a turtle can lay eggs even if there is no male around. If there is no male around the eggs will not be fertilized, but there will still be eggs. Now let’s start discussing the visual signs.

Visual Signs

Unfortunately, the visual signs are not too easy to spot. Unlike in the case of mammals, the belly of a turtle won’t change too much in size when it’s pregnant, so you will need a hands-on approach.

When turtles are pregnant you should be able to feel the eggs by gently touching the plastron (the lower side of the shell) of your turtle. But you have to be very careful when you do this, depending on the stage of the pregnancy the eggs might be extremely fragile, and you don’t want to crack them.

Here is a guide on how you should proceed:

Step 1

Gently pick your turtle up by the sides. Just like in this picture:

Don’t pick your turtle by the plastron and the top of the shell, this can damage the eggs if your turtle is pregnant. So don’t do it like this:

Then gently place it with the belly up in your other hand. Placing your turtle upside down won’t have any negative effects on its health if you keep it this way for just a couple of minutes.

Step 2

Now there are two ways you can check. The first one is to put one finger on the plastron and move it all over the plastron and see if you feel any bumps. Normally when the eggs are hard enough, they should slightly press against the shell.

Step 3

When you feel one of these bumps you can gently press on that spot and see if the egg moves. If there is an egg you should feel that the egg will slightly push back after you press.

Remember to press very gently, you don’t want to hurt the turtle or break the eggs. But if you are able to feel the eggs, it usually means that their shell is quite hard already, so there shouldn’t be any danger.

Step 4

If you don’t want to risk breaking the eggs or hurting the turtle you can always go to a vet, most of them have a lot of experience in doing this.

The biggest problem with this method is that you shouldn’t be able to feel the eggs until your turtle is at least halfway through her pregnancy. So a better way to find out if your turtle is pregnant is to look at changes in her behavior.

Changes in Behaviour

The best way to know if a turtle is pregnant is to look at her behavior.

In general, all changes in behavior mean that something is happening to your turtle. If you have a female turtle those changes usually mean that she is pregnant.

There are quite a few behavioral changes that occur when a turtle is pregnant. Here are the most common ones.

Ganges in Diet

When a turtle is pregnant the number of foods that she eats will drastically change. Usually, a pregnant turtle will eat a lot less, or she won’t eat at all, the reason they do this is because they prefer to spend their time searching for a suitable nesting site, instead of eating. 

There are a few turtles that like to overeat in a situation like this. While overeating is not the most common response of a turtle when she is pregnant, it can still happen, after all, every turtle is different from the rest, and they all have a different personality.

Even if your turtle doesn’t have that much space to search for a place to lay its eggs, it will still search for one, it’s its natural response to this situation.

Diggind

A pregnant turtle will try to dig a lot. If your turtle is pregnant you might find her trying to dig in the substrate of the tank, or in the basking area. This is also something that they do try to find a good nesting site.

Basking Habits

The basking habits of a pregnant turtle will also change. When a turtle is pregnant she will change her baking habits, she might end up not basking for days because she is trying to find a suitable place to lay the eggs.

Trying to escape

A pregnant turtle will try to get out of the tank. When a turtle is pregnant she will do everything that she can to get out of the tank. She will try to dig holes, she will try to climb over, she will try to swim through the glass, everything that can be done she will do it.

So if your turtle is showing all of those signs then you should try to feel the carapace, or even better go to the vet and let him check. And if your turtle is truly pregnant then you still have work to do.

What To Do If Your Turtle Needs to Lay Eggs

At this point, you basically have two options, and they all depend on your location and what season it is. If you live in a house with a yard and it’s warm outside then you can go outdoors, if you don’t have access to a yard or it’s cold outside then you should go indoors.

You should use those methods when your turtle seems really desperate to get out of its tank.

The Outdoors Method

This is the simplest and usually the best way to do things.

First, make sure that your yard is secure and your turtle can’t leave it, or simply make a smaller part of the yard secure and that should also be fine. After you are sure that your turtle has no way to escape you can take her outside and let her find a good spot in the yard to lay her eggs.

If you want to help her find a place to lay her eggs faster then you should wet the ground before you let her out. Turtles usually choose to lay their eggs in places with wet earth. 

If you use chemical fertilizers for your flowers or plants, you should try to keep the turtle away from them, it’s not good for their health.

The outdoors method is ideal because you don’t have to do too much and is similar to what happens when a turtle is pregnant in the wild.

The Indoors Way

For this method you are going to need:

• A big plastic container
• Organic potting soil
• Sand

Mix the organic soil with some sand and then fill about two-thirds of the container with the mixture. The container has to be a big one, otherwise, the turtle will feel trapped in and won’t feel comfortable enough to lay the eggs. Try to avoid any kind of pesticides or fertilizers, they are bad for the turtle.

After you put the mixture in the container spray some water over the soil until it’s a little moist, after that partially cover the container with the lid, this way the turtle will have a lit area and a slightly dimmer area where she can lay the eggs.

Before placing the turtle in the container make sure that the temperature of the room is not too cold or too hot, and that there are no other people around or other animals that can disturb the turtle.

Now you can safely place the turtle in the container and wait for her to lay the eggs. It should take her between 2 and 3 hours to lay all the eggs. You can try to look at her while she is doing this but she might feel intimidated and won’t lay any eggs, if that is the case then you should leave her alone.

Even if the whole process of laying the eggs can take between 2 and 3 hours, your turtle might have a specific time of the day when she wants to lay her eggs, so the best thing that you can do is to place the container in a well naturally lit room, and leave her the entire day at her disposal, some turtles might want to lay their eggs in the morning, some during the night, there is a specific time that turtles lay eggs at.

Now let’s see what you can do with the eggs.

What to Do With the Eggs

Now that the eggs have been laid you basically have two options, and which one you will choose depends if the eggs are fertilized or not, and the time you have at your disposal.

The simplest way to know if the eggs are fertilized or not is this:

Did your female turtle interact with a male turtle recently?

No. In that case, the eggs are probably not fertilized, after all, you need a male turtle to fertilize the eggs.

Yes. Then there is a good chance that the eggs are fertilized.

What to do if the eggs are not fertilized

If the eggs are not fertilized then you can just throw them away, no babies will come out of them at this point. Or you can always try to eat them, I personally haven’t tried them but I heard that they taste similar to chicken eggs. If the eggs are fresh you can safely cook and eat them if you want.

So if the eggs are not fertilized no baby turtle will come out of them so you can basically do whatever you want with them.

What to do if the eggs are fertilized

At this point, you have two options.

Option 1. If you don’t have the time to take care of the eggs you can just throw them away. Not everybody has the time to take care of turtle eggs, and then baby turtles, so it’s completely understandable if you don’t want to keep them.

Option 2. If you want you can always incubate the eggs. The process is not very difficult but you will have to do a few things to make sure that the eggs will hatch. But taking care of turtle eggs is another subject that I’ve already covered in another article. If you want to keep the eggs or you are just curious how you can take care of turtle eggs then check out this article: How to Take Care of Turtle Eggs.

Extra Tip

Before you start checking if your turtle is pregnant, it’s a good idea to first check if your turtle really is a female.

I know that it might seem a little weird, but you really need to check this first. If your turtle is male then there is no chance of him being pregnant. Even if your turtle shows behavioral changes similar to a pregnant turtle, if it’s a boy it could mean something completely different.

So before you start checking if your turtle is pregnant first make sure that it’s a female turtle and not a male turtle. If you don’t know how to check if your turtle is male or female check this article out: How to Tell If Your Turtle Is Male or Female (with Pictures).

Common Questions

How long do turtles stay pregnant? The period can differ a lot based on the species, but in general, it can last anywhere from 3 to 6 months.

Can pet turtles have babies? Yes, pet turtles are biologically just like wild turtles, so they can have babies just like wild turtles can

Will a turtle eat its own eggs? Yes, if the eggs are not fertilized, sometimes turtles will eat the eggs if they are hungry.

Final Thoughts

So, in order to find out if your turtle is pregnant, you can either try to feel her plastron and see if you can feel any eggs, or you can look at her behavior and see if there are any major changes.

The fact that your turtle is pregnant shouldn’t change the way you take care of her. You just have to offer her a proper place to lay her eggs when the time comes, so this shouldn’t impact you too much.

I hope this article answers all of your questions, but if you still have some unanswered questions you can always leave a comment down below and I will answer it as soon as possible.

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