Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is my outdoor enclosure. It is about 4' by 6' and it has bricks buried around the inside edge to prevent escape. I would like to prepare it for hibernation for an adult three toed box turtle. PLease, let me know if you have advice on how to accomplish this. I live in Mid-Missouri, and the winters can be fairly harsh, although recently they have been rather mild.
THANK YOU!

Your set up looks small to me. I keep mine outside in an area about 20 times the size you have. I have never had a turtle dig out or even seen one try to. I have had to modify the sides of the pen because the more talented turtles have climbed out.

I hibernate my box turtles outside in NJ every winter and have never had a problem. I read that they like to hibernate underground in old rabbit burrows. What I did was dig a burrow of my own with a shovel. I used a trenching shovel that makes a smaller hole then a regular garden shovel. I dug it at a 60 degree angle and as deep as the shovel will go (over 3 feet). The dirt from the hole I mound up around the outside of the hole so that if we get lots of rain the water will not run into the hole. During the summer I keep the burrow covered with large slabs of slate so that the turtles do not go into it. Around the middle of October I uncover the burrow. Every year with in 2 or 3 days of Nov 1st the turtles will climb down to the bottom of the burro. The burrow is very steep but the box turtles have no problem climbing up or down. The Female sometimes I have to give her a little push to get moving down the burrow. After they are down I cover the entrance with boards so that no other animals try to use the burrow. I then cover the whole area with lots of leaves (like 2 to 3 feet.) The leaves act as insulation and also shed rain and snow water away form the hole. The turtles are now set for the winter. Come April when things are starting to warm up I remove the leaves so that the sun will reach down into the burrow. When I do this I always find the female at the top and under the boards and leaves. I don’t know when she got there, If she just climbed there or has spent most of the winter at the top under the boards and leaves. Because I am not sure were she spends the winter I always make sure that there are lots of leaves on top. The burrow is to deep for me to reach in and pull the turtles from the bottom so they have to climb out on here own. Over the years leaves have fallen into the burrow and I can not see the turtles at the bottom. My male does not come up until some time in May. Sometimes almost a month after the other turles are up. Each year I start to worry that he did not make it, but he always shows up. The last 2 winters have been extra cool with freezing temperatures for weeks on end but the turtles have always come through in great shape.

I have started to give my turtles a choice in were they could hibernate. I also now dig a Trench that is about a foot wide and maybe 2 feet long. I dug this down about 2 feet. I then filled in the whole with nice soft compost and mound it up about a 10 inches above the ground. Some of the turtles now dig into this mound and dig there way down to the bottom and hibernate there. Again once they are all in hibernation in Nov. I will cover this Trench with lots of leaves. The leaves act as an insulation in keeping the ground form freezing during the winter and it also keeps the ground cold so the turtles will not come out of hibernation early if we have a warm spell in January or February. Both ways have worked for my turtles.

By the end of October, To encourage them to use my home make hibernation areas I remove all the other hiding places my turtles use so they naturally go to the places I made.
-----
Jack

Thanks for the info. I saw this on another post and it seems like a good hibernation technique.

For anyone else reading this thread, a 4' by 6' outdoor pen is perfectly satisfactory to keep a single box turtle happy and healthy. In the book Box Turtle Care A-Z, Tess Cook recommends a 5' by 5' pen for up to 3 or 4 turtles. 4' by 4' is the minimum. This pen has a heavy duty lid, for keeping pesky raccoons and other predators out.

My two hibernacula are each bigger than that pen, so I agree with Jack that it looks small for hibernating your turtle. Turtles need to burrow under adequate shelter to hibernate: if you left your turtle in that pen over the winter, it could very well wedge itself in to a corner and have only a piece of 2x4 between it and the elements. You would probably need to bank leaves and other material on the outside of that pen, too, to provide enough insulation. A good hibernaculum is at least partially below ground, and is spacious and deep enough to allow the turtle to move around and go as deep as necessary to keep from freezing: it should also have leaves and other such organic matter over the top. For an example, mine are 2' deep here in central VA, and I pile leaves on top, too.

A word on pen size: I've read the same information, and, while I think that 4x6 is minimum area adequate for the short term, I personally think that a box turtle pen should be as large as you can possibly make it, because even then it won't be big enough. Box turtles have a home range of several acres, so a few square feet is really small in comparison. When humans are confined to comparably small spaces its done as a punishment. Every long term keeper I've encountered has devoted time to enlarging their pen at some point, and wishes they had more room to expand.

Do your turtle a favor and consider building a bigger pen when you have the chance. 100 sq. ft. would give you enough room to work in some habitat variety ( small water feature, shady spots, sunny spots, a hibernaculum adequate for you winter climate, a log tunnel, etc.), which in turn would keep your turtle interested and alert, and, dare I say, happy.

What I've done is line the outer inside edge of the pen with about 6 inch wide trench of gravel to prevent her from digging near the edges. In the center I have dug a large pit over 2 feet into the earth and filled it with leaves and soft soil and then added about a foot more leaves and soft soil on top of that. I have a small log on top of the pile.
My own observations as far as her pen size goes is that she is perfectly content. I have never seen her climbing the walls, and she is usually involved in some sort of activity inside her cage.

She is very cute! In my experience, she would be pacing if she were unhappy. She is probably used to her surroundings and comfortable in them.

I still think that a pen should be as large as you can make it, and if you re-read Tess' chapter on housing you'll see that she makes a similar statement.

As stated in a previous post, most devoted longterm keepers I'm aware of have expanded their pens over the years, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them would make the enclosures even bigger if they could. Ours started out at 750 sq.ft., grew to 1000 sq.ft. this spring, and will probably expand to 1500 sq.ft. in the next few years.

ok some people say they have all this room for there outdoor pens i want to see some post of pics of the best of best pens. maybe ill get some ideas? where do you guys live on a farm? thats alot of land here in NJ i might add

ok some people say they have all this room for there outdoor pens i want to see some post of pics of the best of best pens. maybe ill get some ideas? where do you guys live on a farm? thats alot of land here in NJ i might add

can you post some pics of your pen and setups for hibernation?