Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm planning on hibernating my guys in a fridge for the first time this winter. What is a good quality compact refrigerator that can hold 4 adult sized boxies? My normally tolerant hubby has drawn the line at putting them in our food refrigerator. I don't have room for an old full-sized one - I need to get a small one to fit in the corner of the room.
Thanks!

I don't recomend this at all unless you have someone that lives close by to you that has successfully done this in the past.
Go back into the archives of all that turtle/tortoise lists and do a search of Refirgerator Hibernation and pay attention to all the posts during January and Feb. that start 'help...'
The problem with using a frige is that you are trying to provide the conditions to hibernate where the animal has zero control of the conditions.
The factors involved is humidity, ambient temperature, the animals metabolism (based on the ambient temp and humidity), the animals basic reserves and the general health of the animal and finally the individual difference of the animal. All of these are connected and there is no way you can guess these requirements without trial and error. The trial part is easy and where you are at... it is the error part where you run into problems.
If you live in an area where an animal is inclined to hibernate I suggest you look into a hibernaculum.
I use a pile of grass clippings in their enclosure that I pile up over the year. When the cool weather hits I 'fluff' it up and they have the choice as to where it is good for them to hibernate. Keep in mind that the only thing you have to worry about is freezing. You can avoid this by going deep and next to the foundation of a building if you are in an area where there is long periods of cold days. That's general advice. You really need to talk to someone exactly in your area for specific suggestions.
Ed

how do you feel about basement hibernation?

I think that is the ideal if you cannot let it hibernate on its own. The conditions are less specific and less controlled. It's hard to put into words but it has to do with mass. Think about it. Hibernaculums in the wild are usually massive. (lakes, Rock outcrops, wood piles (not small ones)...) If you loose power on a frige in January and you put them under in December the odds of you missing it are pretty good. That is only one thing that can go wrong.
Ed

Katie,

I do this every year. Email me directly at: rattay@aol.com

We can discuss the details and the risks.

Paul

I had an old beat up dorm fridge a previous roomate left in my apartment.
The main things are:
1) does it hold a reliable steady temp? (you want about 42F)
2) can you rig up some aeration?

I made a humidifier by taking an aquarium air pump, hooking it up to an airline tube with an air stone on it, and sealing it in the lid of a jar. The lid also had a line coming out, above the level of it's mostly full water, that took humid air away, out through another hole in the lid, and over into the fridge.

In the seal of the fridge door, I had duct taped two rigid bic pen tubes (one pen cut in half). I inserted the humid air tube into one of them, leaving the other as an "exhaust" since I was pumping air in.

Now I had a steady humid 42F. I packed the boxies up in plastic shoeboxes (important to have holes in bottom and top to drain any condensation) packed with moist sphagnum moss around them.

The boxies must be allowed to dig down and start hibernating on their own, then collected, boxxed, and put into the fridge. You will want to run the fridge at least a month to be sure it is steady. Use of a digital thermometer (maybe leave the probe inside, the display outside) would help.

So the water jar is on the outside of the fridge? Doesn't pumping air in change the temperature, or do you turn the temp down to compensate?

The jar is on the outside, but all that comes from it is water vapor, pushing room temperature humid air into the fridge at a very slow rate (it's a tiny fish tank air pump). It has no noticeable effect on the fridge temperature.

Fridges like this cheap one I had have no temp setting, so you use the thermometer to tell what temp it is at each numeric setting. That's why I spent a month doing this ahead of time, to be sure it was stable (check on it many times a day, keep a log of it).

During hibernation, this is in a heavily used room in the house, so we would see it all the time and check the temperatures regularly (again, a good reason to have the digital thermometer, so you don't have to open the door). Weekly we would open it and touch each turtle, make sure they were doing okay. Every two to three weeks we'd quickly weight them. We kept a chart of their weight and it barely moved for any of them.

Thanks for all the advice. I don't have a basement and my enclosures are turtle tables a little off the ground (because of all the granules we put down for fire ants in the yard), so I don't know if hibernating outside would be an option. I'll do more research on this - thanks again!

Back when I was breeding boxes, I just allowed them to naturally hibernate outside in their enclosure. As long as you don't have really clay based soil and there is no barrier beneath their enclosure, they will dig as far as they need to and they basically regulate themselves. I never had any problems in like 6 years except one year, where I lost 2 turtles out of like 10, and a buddy of mine who also raised them lost like half of his that year. Not sure what happened that year, but neither of us ever lost one in hibernation except that year.
If you have a basement that stays cool in the winter, just keep it in an aquarium with heavy sphagnum and leave a window open and allow the temp to fluctuate with the weather. You can insulate a heating pad under the enclosure so that it provides just a touch of heat to keep it from getting too cold. A temp of around 53 is usually good to shoot for. Good luck.

Shaun Roberson