Curtis, your lucky to have such mild winters, but I think you are wise to still give them some leaves for insulation, 20 is still well below freezing. Iowa certainly is not the most ideal place to have box turtles, but I have tried to provide them with a quality life, and think for the most part have done, so, but there is always room for improvement and I will contually try to improve their conditions. I didn't get around to building a larger pen this last summer, because I put all my effort into building a huge koi pond, which turned out quite nice, we really enjoyed it this summer and fall, but first thing next spring building a big boxie pen around my small goldfish pond will be first priority.
I know it's off topic but I attached a pic of the pond, thought you might find it interesting, I dug it by hand with a shovel and haulded in all the rock, appoximately 30 tons, with the help of my friend and using both of our 4x4 pickups and 2 wheelbarrows, many, many back-breaking trips to the rock quarry and the material store for the fancy big pieces of rock, took about 5-6 weeks to complete. The pond is 35ft long x 12ft wide with a 25ft waterfall/stream coming down the side yard and a 6 ft tall fountain spray in the shallow end, the deep area is 3ft deep. Total cost was ~$2200, pretty low cost when you consider the liner alone was $900, probably would have cost at least 3 times that to have someone do it. My neighbors all think I am insane, lol, but no one can call me lazy, lol



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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

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