For turtle breeders, the gender identification and gender control of turtles are very important. There are also many on the market under the banner of Baogong and Gongwen incubation. Let me talk about myself using musk turtles as an example. experience.

First of all, the gender of the musk turtle cannot be distinguished from the appearance of the male and female when the hatchlings are out of the shell, and the tail of the hatchlings is There is no obvious relationship between male and female length. It needs to be raised to at least 4cm before it starts to show signs. In the few months after there are signs of maleness, if the growth is normal, it will become more obvious. If there is no change, , then it is most likely to be female. Generally speaking, it should be easier to distinguish between male and female with a size of 5 to 6CM, but it does not rule out that some late-developing companies need to go to larger sizes before they can identify them.

So how do you spot the signs of a male partner? You can observe the ratio of the thickness of the tail root to the overall turtle when it is in a relaxed state. I usually observe it from the side of the transparent breeding box during the process of feeding floating feed. If there is a comparison between a male and a female, the difference will be more obvious. When the male appears for the first time, take out the water body and observe the plastron tail of the musk turtle hatchling. Usually the turtle hatchling will shrink up, which is not obvious in the first place. When it shrinks, it is more difficult to observe. Therefore, it is difficult to see the male after the first appearance in this way. . Of course, many people will squeeze the turtle's head to see if there are any genitals exposed outside the body. This method is not recommended and has certain risks. Of course, there are many ways to see other characteristics on the Internet. I have not verified the accuracy of the method. Sex, I won’t list them all here. The following are the changes in the tail roots of several musk seedlings in one month:

Furthermore, let’s talk about how to control the males of musk turtles. mother. There are two main mechanisms for male and female control in turtles. One is genetic sex determination (GSD). Human gender is the male opposite-sex gamete of XY chromosomes. Unlike humans, there are XY male opposite-sex gametes in turtles. Bird-like ZW female heterosexual gametes. The other is incubation temperature sex determination (TSD), and under this mechanism, there are three modes, namely low-temperature male and high-temperature female (Ia), low-temperature female and high-temperature male (Ib), and high-temperature and low-temperature female, intermediate temperature male (II) .

Our common Brazilian tortoises and tortoises are model Ia, so the mutated Brazilian tortoises on the market can indeed be fair. The female is 100% in control, and the musk turtle belongs to the II mode, which means that the male will only come out easily at the intermediate temperature. This causes the temperature fluctuation of the hatching environment to easily affect the male hatching. However, it is very difficult to achieve an absolute constant temperature. , which is why it is very difficult for musk turtles to hatch their eggs 100%. Combining my hatching experience with several breeders, it is basically female when the temperature is below 25 degrees and above 28 degrees, so the middle temperature should be the temperature range where male musk turtles are likely to hatch. Temperature determines whether the hatchling is a male or not. However, due to the temperature difference in the incubation environment, no reliable musk breeder will tell whether the hatchling is a male.