Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is mainly a question for those of you that successfully keep and breed Ornates. What size groups do you keep your Ornates in? I currently have a 3:12 all together group in a large outdoor enclosure and Ive been having alot of problems with them which I am presuming is being caused by either stress or their environment(see my post a little further down the page for more info).

Anyway, Ive been told that housing this many together can create a lot of stress and could be leading to the problems I'm having. I just wanted to see if any one else has had problems keeping more than 3-4 together at once.

I have kept groups slightly smaller than yours together without any problems. I am down to a 2.6 of T.o.ornata currently due to their huge appetites and affinity for live prey. I also have some hold back young that are kept separately according to size.

It is kind of difficult to determine the causation when you are dealing with "overcrowding". Is it simply stress from the large group, or is it the common problems that can occur secondarily? For example, dirty water, high fecal content, more competition for food, competition for shelter, etc..

Overcrowding can certainly be an issue with any species of turtle.

It is certainly worth a try for you to separate them.

How large is your pen?

Another thing that I forgot to mention...ornates need to be kept WELL FED! They don't do well with long periods of fasting, unless of course it is hibernation. Frequent smaller meals seem to be better for them. They also tend to regurgitate large meals.

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My Ornate pen is a long rectangle against the side of the house, it measures 28" long and 4" wide. They are usually very well fed but as I said in the other thread, for the last 2-3 weeks only 3 of them will eat, I don't know if thats because of the time of year or something else, its certainly not near cold enough for them to hibernate, its almost 80 degrees right now.

It may not be that cool there but the amount of daylight could be confusing them.

What about breaking your group into 1:4 groups? You should be able to divide the pen into thirds - it would be only a couple feet less then minimum per turtle. Later you could widen it a few feet to make up for that.

I can definitely break them down into 1:4 groups but I just wanted to check and see if anyone had any problems keeping them together first.

Butting in here....sorry!

Have you considered reconfiguring your pen? What you've described is a pretty long, narrow corridor, that makes it difficult for turtles to some distance between themselves.... Just a thought.