Softshell Turtle Eggs Help

This page started as one reader’s panicked email after a coyote dug up part of her softshell turtle’s nest. Five years on, we’ve had so many variations of the same question that it deserves a proper guide. If you’ve found softshell turtle eggs in your garden, or you’re trying to incubate eggs from a breeding pair, this is what we tell every reader who writes in — pulled together with Priya, who has hatched out three clutches of Florida softshells over the past four years.

First: are these actually softshell eggs?

Softshell turtle eggs are easy to mis-identify. They’re small (about 2 cm across), almost perfectly spherical, with a slightly leathery white shell — not the elongated ovals that sliders or cooters lay. If you’ve found eggs in a dug-out depression in sandy soil near water in the southern US, and the female you saw was flat, pancake-shaped and long-snouted, you’re very likely looking at a Florida softshell (Apalone ferox) or spiny softshell (Apalone spinifera) clutch.

Clutch size is the other tell. Softshells lay larger clutches than most freshwater turtles — 15 to 30 eggs in a single nest isn’t unusual, where a slider or painted turtle might lay 5 to 12.

Should you leave them in the nest, or move them?

Our default advice is leave them where they were laid, with a wire-mesh nest protector pinned over the top to keep raccoons, coyotes and dogs out. The mother chose the spot for a reason — soil temperature, drainage, sun exposure — and those are exactly the variables you’d have to guess at if you moved the eggs.

Move the eggs only if one of these is true:

• A predator has already disturbed the nest and intact eggs are exposed.
• The nest is in a location where it will obviously flood (low-lying lawn, drainage line).
• The eggs were laid somewhere that will be mowed, dug, or built over within the incubation window.
• You’re a permitted breeder and the eggs are from your own animals.

Remember that softshell turtles are protected in many US states — check your local fish & wildlife regulations before moving eggs of any wild turtle. In Florida, for example, you generally need a permit to possess softshell eggs that aren’t from licensed breeding stock.

Critical: don’t rotate the eggs

This is the one rule we cannot stress enough. Once a turtle egg is more than 12–24 hours old, the embryo orients itself inside the egg and attaches to one wall. Rotating the egg after that point shears the embryo loose and almost always kills it.

If you have to move eggs, the workflow is:

1. Before you touch them, mark the top of each egg with a soft pencil — an X or a small dot.
2. Keep the mark pointing up the entire time.
3. Move them into an incubation container with the same orientation.
4. If you accidentally rotate one and don’t remember which way is up, you’ll still see a faint chalky band forming around the “equator” of the egg within a few days — that band is the embryo’s air pocket, and it tells you which way is up.

Incubation setup

If you’ve made the call to incubate, here’s the rig that’s worked for us every time:

• Container: a deli cup or clear plastic shoebox with a snap-on lid, half a dozen pin-holes for air exchange.
• Substrate: vermiculite or perlite, mixed with water at a 1:1 ratio by weight (not volume — this matters). The substrate should clump when squeezed but no water should drip out.
• Egg placement: press each egg about halfway into the substrate, pencil-mark facing up, with a small gap between eggs so they don’t touch.
• Temperature: 28–30 °C (82–86 °F). Softshells don’t have strict temperature-dependent sex determination the way map turtles do, but staying in this band gives you healthy hatchlings of both sexes.
• Humidity: 80–90 %. The substrate alone usually keeps you there; don’t mist the eggs directly.
• Incubator: a proper reptile incubator (Hova-Bator, ReptiPro) is far more stable than a homemade rig. If you’re using a heat mat under a box, get a thermostat — a temperature swing of even 4 °C will hurt hatch rate.

How long does softshell incubation take?

This is the question that prompted the original reader email back in 2020 (her eggs were on day 65 with no babies), so it deserves a clear answer: softshell turtle eggs take roughly 55 to 85 days at the temperatures above, with most clutches hatching between days 60 and 75. The wider books and websites that say “59–60 days” are quoting the lower end at the warmer end of the range.

Things that lengthen the incubation:

• Cooler incubation (below 27 °C will easily push hatch to 80+ days).
• Eggs that were disturbed early in development — the embryos slow down but often catch up.
• Temperature swings — the embryo essentially pauses when too cool.

If your eggs are past day 60 and you’re worried, candle them. Hold a small bright torch (your phone’s torch works) against the side of the egg in a dark room. A live, late-stage embryo shows up as a dark mass filling most of the egg with veining visible around the edges. A dead egg goes uniformly cloudy or yellow.

Signs hatching is imminent

In the last week before hatch you’ll see one or more of:

• The shell starts “sweating” — small beads of moisture on the surface.
• Faint cracks or a slight dimple forming (this is normal, not damage).
• The egg flattens slightly — the embryo has absorbed most of the yolk.
• Pipping — the hatchling cuts a small slit with its egg tooth and pokes its snout out.

From first pip to fully out of the shell can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Do not pull the hatchling out. They emerge in their own time, and a freshly-pipped hatchling often has a visible yolk sac on its plastron that it needs another three to seven days to absorb before it can start eating.

Hatchling setup

For the first week, keep new hatchlings in a shallow container with damp paper towel and a small water dish (just deep enough to half-submerge them). Once the yolk sac is fully absorbed and the plastron has closed, move them into a proper aquatic setup:

• Water depth: roughly equal to the length of the carapace, with easy access to a haul-out.
• Water temperature: 26–28 °C.
• UVB and a small basking lamp set to 32 °C.
• First foods: chopped earthworm, bloodworm, hatchling reptile pellets soaked soft. Softshells are aggressive feeders — that’s usually a good sign.

Softshell hatchlings are delicate compared with slider hatchlings. Water cleanliness matters more than tank size at this age — we change a third of the water every other day for the first month.

Reader question recap

Back to the email that started this page. The reader was at day 65 with a partially-predated clutch, eggs flaking and cracking, and a panicked tone. Two things she did right: marked the eggs before moving them, and didn’t rotate them. Two things she did that worked out: kept the temperature steady at 80–83 °F, kept the humidity in the 80–90 % band, and didn’t try to assist. Her clutch ended up hatching around days 70–76. We hear that pattern often.

When to call a wildlife rehabber

If the eggs were laid by a wild turtle, the hatchlings are not pets — they need to go back to wetland habitat within a few weeks of hatch. A licensed reptile rehabber will release them properly and can also help with any non-thriving hatchlings. AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums can often point you to a local rehabber, and the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association maintains a state-by-state directory.

For more on softshells generally, see our softshell turtle species guide and the broader breed index.

— Priya, with reader edits collected over five years. If you’re sitting on a clutch and stuck, the contact form goes straight to my inbox — mention “softshell eggs” in the subject line and I’ll usually reply within a day.