Our first clutch of painted terrapin eggs has hatched!

Sometime in the middle of June, our fisherman friend-cum-village neighbour-cum-project assistant who has been helping us head-start our river terrapins, Malek Yunus, helped us purchase 15 painted terrapin eggs for incubation. Both Prof. Chan and myself were not in Setiu, but we had earlier on taught Malek how to carefully place the eggs into the styrofoam box and layer them with sand from the nesting bank.

Now, two-and-a-half months later, the hatchlings have emerged. All 15 of them! :D They were all perfectly formed, none of them has any deformities, and they were very active too.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered them this morning! We will be bringing these cute little hatchlings back to Setiu where we will weigh and measure them. This was our first attempt at incubating painted terrapin eggs and we are really pleased that a hatch rate of 100% was achieved.

Perhaps this is good omen that more good things will happen to the turtles?