Posted by:
odyssey
at Fri Sep 23 00:16:18 2005 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by odyssey ]
I have 2 of these at the moment. I saved them from being run over in the roads around my hometown (I live near the confluence of 3 wildlife refuges, so there are lots of ponds and lots of turtles here).
True ŌhatchlingsĶ (i.e. just out of the nest by only a few days and identified as hatchlings by still having their egg tooth) donÕt really eat much. They are still living off food carried over from their egg.
I always place mine in a deep (to prevent the turtles from escaping), straight-sided, light-colored plastic bowl, with just enough water to come to the tops of their shells (a CoolWhip container works fine). Every morning I rinse out their bowl with fresh water, then put in 2 ReptoMin floating food sticks that have been pre-softened in a separate cup of water for about 5 minutes. The food needs this pre-softening so the tiny mouths of the turtles can bite it. It often takes a few days... even a week or more... for the turtles to get hungry enough to start looking around for new things to eat, so, even if they havenÕt fed on the food at all the previous day, I throw out the old food when I clean their dish and give them new food. Then, one day, youÕll notice that, not long after you put in the food, there is a tiny crescent-shaped bite mark in one of the ReptoMin sticks. Now you are on your way. (YouÕll also notice that the baby turtles are quite active and the food thatÕs not eaten gets trampled on and smashed during the course of the day. If this mess bothers you, feel free to rinse out the bowl more often.)
ReptoMin is an excellent choice for aquatic turtles. Though there are other brands that are cheaper, IÕve never found another food that aquatic turtles like as well as ReptoMin. As the turtles grow, add more food sticks, enough that it takes them 15 to 30 minutes for the turtles to eat it all. When their mouths are big enough, you can add tiny live (or dead) fish, or mealworms, to their container, and eventually move them into an aquarium.
Getting them started eating is the biggest challenge in keeping hatchling turtles of any kind, but, once you get them going, common snapping turtles are one of the easiest turtles to keep.
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