We built a new enclosure for our two 3-toed box turtles living in the a sunbelt microclimate in San Francisco (Bernal Heights neighborhood in SF).



I put photos up here of the site preparation and the end result here:

http://www.sfraw.com/turtle_enclosure/



You can see Mishima and Petal exploring the enclosure the first day and in their hidey holes yesterday:

http://www.sfraw.com/turtles/



It took a long time to prepare the site as our place was built in 1906 and there are all these old foundations and such under the back area, which someone covered entirely with a cement. All of this had to be broken up in order to put the enclosure in, line it with wire mesh, fill with dirt and peat moss. We dug down to just under 3 feet.



We found some cool artifacts during our little excavation - including an old beer bottle from 1903, some old bones, old bricks, marbles, pieces of pottery, little medicine glass bottles - all this in just a 4'x8' section of the yard! The plan is to keep the turtles in this enclosure while we do construction on the house, and then to eventually take out all of the cement and landscape with CA natives and have a little vegetable garden, too.



You can see some of them here:

http://www.sfraw.com/artifacts/



For now, Petal and Mishima have their little "veggie" garden to hang out in.



The plants have been growing really well! Turtles seem happy and active (mating, too), though they are not that interested in eating. I really hope this ends up just being a thing they will get over after they acclimate to the new place and not a problem with the set-up. I water every day and have just started soaking them every day in warm water, too.



The temperatures range between high 40s-50s at night and between 65-100s during the day (averaging about 78-80 during the day). The temperatures change quite a bit throughout the day, depending on where the sun is (we have big trees that shade the yard, but I placed the enclosure in the sunniest part). During the hotter/full-sun part of the day, they hide out in their muddy hidey holes in the shade. I did a few weeks of just keeping a log of the direct sun and shade temperatures of the location before deciding to put the enclosure there and have four different thermometers in the enclosure that I keep track of. The temperature can go well over 100 (as it did yesterday and the day before) at the hottest part of the day, but when this happens, they are in locations that are not nearly as hot (closer to 80 degrees). Any ideas? I've never had either of them go off their food before. I wasn't worried at first, but now I am starting to worry. I have been trying all sorts of foods to try and get them to eat more than a bite here and there. Their stools were normal, but today neither one of them had stools when I soaked them.



Kasie



Turtles in their new enclosure.

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