I'm in western Oklahoma, ornates are native here at least (easterns would probably die in this without a drip hose left on near constantly).

The problem is that the soil is extremely dry, you can soak it with a sprinkler for a few hours and dig down 6 inches or so and hit dry dirt. We also had an unusually cold winter with a few days hitting -10 - -11F. 0F is more like our "extreme" cold here. I'll water the pen a bit in the winter on the warmer days, but worry about soaking it much.

Of course now that they're up and we're getting high 90s to 100 F weather they get soaked daily. The problem isn't with it being hot and dry now, but rather what happened overwinter since two did not come up.
I'm curious if there's any in the Midwest or south that have had similar problems before, but then maybe not since these 6 to 8 month long droughts are getting more common in just recent years.

This has been an odd year, though. It hit 104F in early May, even before the turtles came up. It's mostly getting that hot because there's so little moisture plus the daily winds drying everything more.

There's a wild male that usually wanders around the area I live in (right at the edge of town with fields across the street). By now I normally would have spotted him half a dozen times but haven't seen him once this year. There's also a high concentration of wild ornates, RES, snappers, and mud turtles around the area my in-laws live (near a couple ponds outside of town) and so far I've only seen one RES out there even on the days it rained and the days after..

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