Category Archives: instahatch

Stars Are Coming To Life

Its Indian star season here at Tortstork.  Indian stars mate in the spring, lay eggs through summer, but it takes on average 100-125 days for them to fully incubate.  They first started hatching at the end of August, and they will continue to hatch through December.  If you are interested in watching these gorgeous tortoises […]

556th Egg Shipped And Hatched!

Our 556th hatch a tortoise egg shipped on 3/21/22.  It traveled overnight 2,328 miles to Bozeman, Montana. On 3/28/22 (9 days later) it started to pip and 16 hours later it was fully hatched!  The baby eastern Hermann’s entered the world in its forever home.  The new owner was able to experience the beginning of […]

94.44% success rate for Hatch A Tortoise Instahatch Eggs

Tortstork shipped out its 378th egg this week and it successfully hatched!  Our successful hatch rate is 94.44%.  The failures vary from unknown reasons, but there are some theories.  It could be form mishandling during shipping to not having the right incubator to having too high of  a temperature in the incubator to delays in […]

Conserving a species one tortoise at a time.

Tortstork was honored to be highlighted in the August edition of Neighbors Magazine.  It discusses my goals for colony assurance (captive breeding).  It also talks about how I envision the hatch a tortoise instahatch egg to one day help the conservation of these amazing animals.

Egyptians are starting to hatch

Some of our baby Egyptian eggs are starting to hatch.  I was hoping these would be instahatch eggs and hatch in some lucky person’s incubator.  This Egyptian egg was laid on 5/9/19.  It piped on 7/31/19 and slowly is emerging at a tortoise’s pace. This little tortoise weighs around 4 grams.

100 is in the Egyptian bag!

The 100th instahatch egg was an Egyptian tortoise egg!!!  It was shipped to Gainsville, Florida, 1,000 miles away.  It was laid on 4/20/19, shipped on 6/27/19, delivered on 6/28/19, and started to hatch later that afternoon.  It is doing fantastic and is super active.

Russian Instahatch egg was not rushing to hatch.

Instahatch egg #83 was laid on 4/6/19, shipped to Tulsa, Oklahoma on 6/3/19, delivered on 6/4/19 and started to hatch on 6/22/19. 18 days after delivery.  Talk about a stressful few weeks.  I was confident that it was going to hatch because the customer kept sending me updates of candling pictures and it was progressing […]

Marginated Instahatch #86 climbing out of the deli-cup.

#86 is a Marginated tortoise.  It was laid 4/17/19, shipped to Albany, California on 6/17/19 (2,490 miles away), delivered on 6/18/19, and hatched on 6/20/19.  It was so full of energy it climbed out of its deli cup!!!!!!

Instahatch #85 with a temporary tattoo!

This Sulcata egg was laid on 3/5/19, shipped 6/17/19 to Willows, California, delivered 6/18/19, and hatched the same day!!! When i first started shipping freshly laid eggs, i placed temporary tattoos on the egg.  My success rate for the freshly laid eggs were not very good, which is why i moved away from them and […]

#84 Hatched and turned into #93 & #94

Russian instahatch egg #84 was laid on 4/6/19, shipped to Philadelphia, PA on 6/3/19, delivered on 6/4/19 and started to pip on 6/18/19. It took 14 days to hatch from the day of delivery and it incubated for a total of 73 days. The customer was so eggcited, he bought two more instahatch eggs that […]