Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've had my box turtle for about a year now. I've experimented with giving him almost every fruit and vegetable I could find at the grocery store and it seems he will only eat corn and cataloupe with corn being his absolute favorite. I've also attempted to give him worms, crickets, box turtle food, and meal worms, but he refuses to eat any of those. I'm really starting to get worried that he is not getting enough nutrition.

I attempted to "starve him out" one time and attempted to force him to eat some box turtle food, but after several days (5 or so) he still refused to eat. I got overly worried, broke down and gave him some corn. Are corn and cantaloupe good enough? Is there anything I can do?

Sometimes I think of returning him to the wild, but I fear this would do more harm than good since I've had him for about a year now. I haven't read anything about reintegrating your turt into the wild after such a long period so I assume it's bad/impossible.

I did not originally remove him from the wild, a friend of mine took him off the road where he was about to get squashed and later pawned him off onto me. I enjoy him and always try to give him the best care, but if it would be better to let him go back to the wild I would not hesitate.

Box turtles benefit from a very varied diet: unfortunately, corn and canteloupe don't really represent much variety...
The good news is, your turtle IS eating, it has just become fixated on two foods. With some patience, you'll be able to introduce other foods and give it a more balanced diet.
I'm providing a link to a site with excellent suggestions on how to do this, as well as an overview of the nutritional needs of turtles.
Releasing it is probably not an option...and even if it were, the turtle really should go back to the place where it was originally found.
With a little persistance, you should be able to get it eating more foods.
On another note, 5 days actually probably isn't much of a hunger strike for a turtle: I suspect they can go quite a bit longer without food.
Good luck
Stephanie
Link

One trick to getting turts to try different foods is to blend them together with something they like. We learned this by accident because we juice at our house. The pulp that was left over was generally going into the trash. One day my wife thought we should try offering it to the turtle and he went for it! Now we have alot of diff veggies and fruits in our juicer so the turts get to eat a variety. We still feed chunked fruits and veggies too but the pulp is a good use of something we were throwing away!

Good luck.