Hello All,
I have a question about Russian Tortoise breeding behavior. I have two torts, a male who is over 6" SCL and has been a household pet for 15+ yrs, and a female that is slightly larger than 4.5" and was received in early Dec as a Christmas present. The male has been in hibernation since the end of Nov, and they were introduced for the first time when he was awakened a little over a week ago.
The first two days after introduction seemed to go smoothly, but by the third day he was in with her the male started exhibiting some aggression (attempting to bite her on the head and front legs) and the next day I saw what I'm guessing is the typical head bobbing behavior (quick up and down movements). This has been going on now for the past week or so and the whole time the male (Man'ka) has remained in close proximity to the female (Sasha); he sleeps beside her with his head or front leg resting on her and pretty much follows closely behind wherever she goes.
After reading through several sites, I was under the impression that even though females 4.5" can lay viable eggs, that's really more of an exception than the rule, and so I wasn't expecting to see any breeding behavior this year because I thought she was too small to be reproductively viable. What I’m wondering about, however, is would he be exhibiting this behavior if she were not reproductively mature? As I said earlier, she is only slightly larger than 4.5" and so I didn't expect there to be any interaction this year. From what I've read, he is obviously exhibiting breeding displays, however, and he has even tried to mount her a couple of times, which hasn’t been successful because she escaped.
I have talked with friends who have owned other species in the past and they said that their males had displayed to one another during the breeding season and so they felt Man’ka was just doing this because it was the right time of year and Sasha happened to be around and that it didn’t have anything to do with maturity. I’m wondering if this is a correct assumption for Russians, and if not what is going on?
Any advice anyone can offer on this maturity/size/behavior thing would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Carrie
p.s. I just recently purchased a book called “Russian Tortoises: A complete guide to Testudo” by E.J. Pirog. Does anyone else have this book and what do you think about the accuracy of the information contained within it?
