Hopefully we can increase the number of hatchlings that emerge from nests in the wild. An egg with an embryo that died caves in and becomes yellow. I always give them a couple of extra days to make sure. Boxes of babies Barb peers in the rest of the boxes. In one box, three black beaks poke through freshly sliced eggshell, and one hatchling has extended its long foreflippers out of the egg.
Hatchlings have a sharp beak so that they can pip the egg open.
Then they sit inside the shell for a couple of days to absorb the yolk sac for energy, which they need for their crawl to the surface and their scramble to the sea. Recent studies suggest the yolk sac may provide a hatchling enough energy to survive 3 months without food. In the bottom-shelf boxes, there are turtles at different stages of hatching. It's a four-step process to induce the hatchling frenzy they normally would get from crawling up through the sand. The first step is simply a temperature-controlled box full of eggs.