Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a new baby!
I had an Eastern Box Turtle for around 12 years until he was stolen from his pen 3 years ago. I have had a Western Ornate for quite some time. This week, I "took the plunge" and got a new captive bred baby Eastern. I have no doubt that he is captive bred as he is only about 1 1/4 inches long and was born in January,as I'm told. Anyhow, he is a very high yellow at 2 months with tiny yellow scales on his forelimbs and neck. My question is: I offer him everything, but he only likes tiny "wiggler" earthworms, even turns his nose up at crickets. He is a lunatic for those earthworms though and I dust them every 3 days. Today he accidentlly ate some melon and seemed to like it. I keep him in a plastic sweater box with reptile bark and long strand spagnum moss misted several times daily. As it is cool here, I have a small undertank heater ( not toughing the box) and a basking lamp At Night, I almost cover the habitat so its quite moist and he buries under the moss and bark. That guy is SO DAMN CUTE!!! If I am doing anything wrong in your opinion, let me know. Feel free to e-mail me personally at LFA2@msn.com or post on the board. Thanks in advance for any help or advice. I never had a baby "this small"
Lloyd

Congrats on the new baby!
My turtles eat just about any living thing I offer but they are still picky in ways. For instance 3 of them will eat crickets, 2 of them won't. 2 of them will eat roaches, the other 3 won't.

Chip the broken one has been the toughest for me to feed. When he first began to eat on his own the only thing he'd eat was dog food. As he felt better he started to choose more items, today he's eating berries, bananas, grapes, cooked sweet potato, mealworms, wax worms but he won't touch a nightcrawler or a cricket. As soon as I ground conditions are right & I can dig some up I'll see if he'll try fresh earthworms straight out of the ground. The others like those much more than store bought nightcrawlers.

I think one way to get them to try other foods is to just keep offering it to them. I think that sometimes they don't recognize an item as food when they first see it. If you keep offering they eventually figure it out.

A baby is going to be more carnivorous than an adult anyway but starting out as a CB hatchling, he'll hopefully learn to trust that you've brought him edible foods & start trying them.
Good luck with the baby.
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PHRatz

Maybe you could get one of those large black plastic tubs that cement is mixed up in. Space for exploration and movement would seem to be important for the health of the youngster. You could take the sweater box, turn it over, cut a hole for ingress/egrees and keep that area warmer than the rest at night? I have 3 box and they have very different diets. good luck/p

I also have a baby Eastern.The largest of the hatchlings out of 3 because they have the best chance of survival.Heat rocks and pads can spell death to turtles because they can quickly overheat and cookthe turtle.If the flor of the enclosure is HOT not warm to touch get rid of it.It's best to have a heat source from above and a cool floor to simulate nature.I am using a 100watt ceramic heat emitter on 1 end which from what I have read is best.My baby loves small slugs I find in the back yard under slates and unless he goes a day without food he won't touch anything else.Also he will eat Reptomin turtle pellets if they're floating in his water sea shell.He has so far eaten all the bugs I found small worms chopped nightcrawlers,mealworms,pillbugs centipedes,and a moth.He refuses any fruits or veggies which is perfectly normal for up to 3 yrs of age.

My experience with new babies has been this: they don't seem to be interested in food that is bigger than they can tackle readily. Usually, if it's something that can fit easily into their mouth, or is easy to catch, they don't seem to have a problem, otherwise they might not show an interest.
Its a good idea to offer fruits and vegetables after a couple of months, to give them the opportunity to have some variety in their diet.