Geneva Area Turtle and Tortoise Society's free meeting on August 4

We're meeting again in the Society's leaders' home and garden in Nyon, about 15 minutes northeast of Geneva. The discussions at this meeting will concern two main topics: preparing nesting sites for pet turtles and tortoises, and hatching their eggs in home-made incubators. Attendees will see the tiny baby Hermann's tortoises (five so far) hatched there from July 3 to 7. The attached photos show their mother laying eggs in the nesting site, and the first baby hatching in the incubator Peter constructed.

Members and visitors at this meeting will see ten more of Suzanne and Peter's tortoises strolling in the garden, and eleven aquatic turtles swimming or basking in the goldfish ponds. (Several turtles have recently dug tentative nests in the nesting area, so there might be more eggs transferred to the incubator soon.) You might also see the latest arrivals in the couple's menagerie: an adult hedgehog in the garden and a baby hedgehog in the terrarium.

Turtles and tortoises tend to lay eggs in spring and/or autumn. Eggs laid in spring hatch that autumn; eggs laid in autumn hatch the following spring. This mid-summer meeting will cover everything you should know to assure 100% hatching of the eggs your pets may have laid this spring, plus the preparation of ideal nesting sites should the chelonians lay eggs this autumn.

Peter will display the incubator he designed, in which the temperature and humidity can be regulated in order to influence the proportion of male and female hatchlings. Each species has its own perfect humidity and ideal temperature. Water turtle eggs need a slightly higher humidity than land tortoise eggs. If the temperature is set too low, no eggs will hatch; at slightly higher temperatures, you'll get mostly males; slightly higher heat will give you an approximately equal number of males and females; still higher heat will produce mostly females; too high a temperature will prevent any from hatching. The difference in each case is only one or two degrees, so accurate temperature and humidity indicators in the incubator are necessary. Peter will explain what to do once you see the first baby start hatching, and how to feed, house and care for the delicate hatchlings the first year.

People who have only one individual turtle or tortoise won't get any hatchlings, of course, unless they have a female who was fertilized within the last few years. (She can retain a male's viable sperm within her body for several years. If she hasn't mated recently, any eggs she lays will be infertile.) One benefit of belonging to this club is that you can find mates for your turtle or tortoise by setting up "blind dates" for them with other club members who have the same species. If they then produce fertile eggs, you can share the hatchlings with one another.

You can find informative articles about breeding turtles and tortoises on the Geneva Area Turtle and Tortoise Society's web site at http://turtles.meetup.... Non-members of the club can instantly become members for free right on the web site. They can then be informed about all future meetings of the club, and get other benefits of membership.

Among those benefits is the right to determine how the club is managed. That's done by expressing your opinion in the web site's ongoing Polls section at http://turtles.meetup.... Each club member gets only one vote, but you can change your vote at any time and instantly see the revised results.

Everyone can read full details about each club meeting in the site's Calendar section at http://turtles.meetup.... But only club members can see the location of the event, and only club members can access the clear road maps and written travel directions to the meeting venue in the web site's Files section at http://turtles.meetup.... The maps and directions can be printed for your drive to the event.

Similarly, only registered members are entitled to host a meeting of the club in their own home or garden. The club meets on the first Saturday of every month, and occasionally on the third Saturday as well. To schedule a convenient date to host a meeting chez vous, call club leaders Suzanne and Peter in Nyon at 0041 22 362 03 60, or write to them at PeterSuzanne2@hotmail.com.

The web site has many more informative sections that can be accessed by members and non-members alike. To see what's there, log on to the section showing Members at http://turtles.meetup..., Photos at http://turtles.meetup..., Messages at http://turtles.meetup..., and Files at http://turtles.meetup....