Get your turtles ready for winter
In the early fall wild box turtles will begin to search for a protected place to spend the winter. It’s crucial to assess your box turtle’s health before you allow it to hibernate. There are many questions you need to ask and answer before your box turtle can safely hibernate. The first is should you even hibernate the turtle? If it is healthy, then yes. Hibernation helps turtles maintain normal thyroid activity, synchronize their reproduction cycles, and complete their normal life expectancies.
Here are do’s and don’ts for successful hibernation:
• Do take the time to prepare a proper hibernation place for your outdoor box turtle. Don’t leave it up to chance.
• Do choose an area that does not flood or collect run-off water. Your turtles could drown.
• Don’t hibernate sick, light weight or young box turtles. Keep them indoors in a roomy, well heated tank and feed them all winter long.
• Do protect your hibernating box turtles from foraging wild animals like rats, mice or raccoons and from other pets that may break open their hibernation boxes or dens.
• Do check on your hibernating turtles once in awhile. You may find ill turtles above ground or the signs of wild animals foraging for food.
• Don’t let your turtles hibernate in wet or soggy ground.
Read more @ http://boxturtlesite.info/hib.html
• Do take the time to prepare a proper hibernation place for your outdoor box turtle. Don’t leave it up to chance.
• Do choose an area that does not flood or collect run-off water. Your turtles could drown.
• Don’t hibernate sick, light weight or young box turtles. Keep them indoors in a roomy, well heated tank and feed them all winter long.
• Do protect your hibernating box turtles from foraging wild animals like rats, mice or raccoons and from other pets that may break open their hibernation boxes or dens.
• Do check on your hibernating turtles once in awhile. You may find ill turtles above ground or the signs of wild animals foraging for food.
• Don’t let your turtles hibernate in wet or soggy ground.
Read more @ http://boxturtlesite.info/hib.html
1 comment:
I rescued a box turtle this summer and keep her in my backyard in Plano. As an aside, the yard is heavily treed, with lots of shrubs and good places for her to hide. It has been well secured and the fence is constructed in such a way that she can't get out. We've fed her well with lots of leafy greens, fruit and worms all summer long and she now regularly comes on the back porch and stands by the door looking for handouts - which I think is so fun. I am concerned about feeding her now though because I don't know when she will hibernate and I read that they shouldn't be fed when it gets close to that time. Do you have any pointers about that for me? Thank you!
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