Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well, I've made some progress, slowly but surely.

We got through with our vacation travel, and finally had enough money to get to a "useable" point with the pens so we could tear out the old ones and get them living in their new digs.

So far out of the 32'x32' area, 3/4 of it is now in use by the turtles. The front corner pen in the photo is missing a wall section. That pen is where we are going to start digging and install an 8'x16' pond, which must be done by the time it's finished. The wall section was left off so we can get a wheelbarrow in and out more easily.

Of the rest of it, there are four 16'x8' pens and one 16'x16' pen. They seem to be enjoying having at least doubled (and in the big pen quadrupled) their space.

I can't wait to finish the pond, so I can move the aquatics to that pen, then I will use the one they are in for a spare.

album of photos of new pens

Wow Nathan, it Looks great, and I'm sure the turtles will be loving all the extra room. In the final "Eden Project" will you have four 16'x8' pens and two 16'x16' pens, or will you expan the pens even more?

Steve

When I get the rails and decking finished, you'll see how the four 16x8's are made to be more or less removable dividers in two 16x16 pens, making a grid. I hope to expand with more pens and then remove those dividers and have all my pens as a minimum of 16x16 (actually those four 8x16's are really 8'x17and a half foot).

Constant expansion... hopefully every year I will make huge expansions.

I still have the rails, decking, pond, and landscaping to do yet on this project... it will be fall before I'm done. Gotta have the pond in for hibernation, though!

Wow Nathan, it Looks great, and I'm sure the turtles will be loving all the extra room. In the final "Eden Project" will you have four 16'x8' pens and two 16'x16' pens, or will you expan the pens even more?

Steve

NP

You are lucky that such low walls keep your turtles in - my alpha male can scale a 2 ft. wall and gives others instructions so then they follow his lead. This guys name should be Houdini and not Bubba.

Might be hard to see in the posted photo, but in others, you can see there is an overhanging rail around the entire top. Right now it just extends around the outside walls of the pens in use, but will shortly (this weekend) be on all the walls of the pens in use, not just the ones to the outside. The overhang on the inside of the outer walls is several inches (it's a 2"x8", and on the interior walls it's a 2"x6".

So the walls really only need to be the 2"x12"'s that they are, since the overhang is the real escape proofing.

I've found that if there are multiple boards used, turtles can climb them well (I had a taller wall made of 4" boards and turtles climbed that quite easily), but a solid smooth foot of wall, where the corners at least have an overhang, is quite effective and I have had no escapes (even from notoriously agile wood and mud turtles).

There is also a foot deep of wall along the outer edges, and six inches to a foot on the inner edges, all backfilled with rock then dirt to deter digouts.

I really like these low walls. After the rail wood is all in place, I'm planning on putting in decking boards at all the corners and in the center to create shady spots underneath, as well as flat places to put potted plants and such.

How the heck are you going to put covers on those pens to keep raccoons out, or is that what the dog is for? I have a wooden fence just like that, and I still get coons.

I haven't had anything but one neighborhood cat in my back yard yet, nor even on my property (some deer sometimes come on my property). I regularly urinate along the fence, and the dogs patrol both inside the yard and the surrounding property (this is only a 100x50 foot fenced area in the center of two cleared acres of field.

When the pen is done we are also installing a "scarecrow" sprinkler system. This ought to keep even the cat out. If necessary, I'm also prepared to install an electric strand around the fence as well.

I don't think animals like our yard, as even the cats typically cross only on the far sides of it. I think because the property is so cleared and void of any cover or safety, they stay away. Two german shepherds chase off anything that comes on the property as well. Luckily our shepherds have no interest in the turtles (one had a mild interest and had to be trained not to touch), and they are not allowed near them without supervision.

I do cover my pens for the young turtles, but have never covered them for the adults. I think the rest of our deterents are doing their job well.

Looks good - nice yard.

thanks...
the yard will be nicer once we are done piling dirt from digging all around it and the grass is allowed to grow. The part you can't see in the pictures is pretty miserable looking with lots of bald spots. It's a lot better than when construction finished a year ago and we moved in, though.

a seriously nice setup you have busted your tail on there nathan. how did you creat the lip/wall cap?
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"If we are good only because we fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-Albert Einstein

the walls I did like so:

first I dug a foot deep trench along the outside perimeter. I lined it up using stakes and kite string to keep the trenches going the right way. Luckily you can see it's pretty much flat there, so there's also not much up and down the walls have to cope with.

In the trench I installed eight foot long 2"x12" pressure treated lumber, using pressure treated 2"x4"s to join their ends together.

The upper section is the same lumber, 2"x12"s. This means that every 8 feet or so there is a set of 2x4's sandwiching the walls, making it about five inches wide at those points, plus at all the corners and places where dividing walls hit, there is additional support.

On top of these I just started laying down 2x8's along the outer wall and screwing them down into the supports and wall 2x12's with 3.5 inch screws. The 2x8's are set so they line up with the 2x4 supports on the outside of the pen area, but on the inside they overhang even those supports by several inches. Along the 2x12 parts where there are no supports, the overhang is even more. The inner walls are getting 2x6's for their rails. These are centered on the wall panel 2x12 instead of off center to provide more interior overhang like the outer walls.

Pretty basic, really, but LOTS of digging. Insane amounts of digging. So far we've trenched out 160 feet or more by hand (mattox, shovel, pike).

The fencing around the outside (the yard's privacy fence) goes 1 foot into the ground as well, all around the entire yard. That's a huge bonus, and we paid extra to have it installed this way.