Yesterday our dog let us know about a visitor in our backyard. It was a 2" florida chicken turtle. Odd thing is we aren't too near any bodies of water. This guy must of crossed some major roads and gone on quite the trek to get here. Well, he was lucky to make it, lucky to pick a yard with a dog that's gentle to turtles, and lucky to pick a yard with an owner that has aquatic turtle experience.



Poor little guy, somewhere down the road something bit his back foot off. It has completely healed up already, and he seems to get along fine, but we are not comfortable releasing him with this injury, so we have a new family member!



On to the question, all the turtles I've kept (sliders and maps) were captive bred and already trained on a commercial diet (which I supplemented with fresh feeds of course). I've got this guy feeding on ghost shrimp at the moment and boy was he hungry! I'd like to train him to eat reptomin. I generally feed fresh foods, but I like to have the reptomin around as a standby. Any advice on how to get him eating it? I tried 1 stick just to see and he completely ignored it. I will probably be feeding live foods for a bit til he settles in, but what then? How would I go about getting him to realize these sticks are food?



Another thing, its my understanding that their care is pretty similar to sliders (mostly water, basking lamp with completely dry area, uvb bulb) except their diet requires more meat. Is this correct?



Thanks in advance for your advice. Since we made the decision to not release, its time to make sure we're doing things right to give this little fella a long happy life.

[ Show Entire Thread ]