Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Yesterday our dog let us know about a visitor in our backyard. It was a 2" florida chicken turtle. Odd thing is we aren't too near any bodies of water. This guy must of crossed some major roads and gone on quite the trek to get here. Well, he was lucky to make it, lucky to pick a yard with a dog that's gentle to turtles, and lucky to pick a yard with an owner that has aquatic turtle experience.

Poor little guy, somewhere down the road something bit his back foot off. It has completely healed up already, and he seems to get along fine, but we are not comfortable releasing him with this injury, so we have a new family member!

On to the question, all the turtles I've kept (sliders and maps) were captive bred and already trained on a commercial diet (which I supplemented with fresh feeds of course). I've got this guy feeding on ghost shrimp at the moment and boy was he hungry! I'd like to train him to eat reptomin. I generally feed fresh foods, but I like to have the reptomin around as a standby. Any advice on how to get him eating it? I tried 1 stick just to see and he completely ignored it. I will probably be feeding live foods for a bit til he settles in, but what then? How would I go about getting him to realize these sticks are food?

Another thing, its my understanding that their care is pretty similar to sliders (mostly water, basking lamp with completely dry area, uvb bulb) except their diet requires more meat. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance for your advice. Since we made the decision to not release, its time to make sure we're doing things right to give this little fella a long happy life.

I still haven't been able to get my chicken turtles on commercial food...

They really like their minnows though.

Yes I found out today the little fella loves guppies. I ended up using large river rock as a substrate because the driftwood was floating even with the slate bottom. Since the tank was set up very quickly from spare parts (I'll work on a more permanent setup but needed something safe that would work as a temporary home - I keep a LOT of fish tanks so I had tons of junk in the garage ). I put some feeder guppies in today since the shrimp hide sooo well in the river rock. The turtle loved it. Just loved the hunt. I've never seen the maps or sliders (only others I have experience with) go so nuts for fish. This guy though, wow, what a hunter. I'm really enjoying this guy so far. I've got a 100 gallon stock tank on the porch waiting for him. I am going to take some time planning the setup though. I hate the temporary home, I usually plan my tanks out for months and almost never make snap purchases. It was kind of fun putting a tank together on the fly though.

Most turtles missing one limb can get along fine in the wild.
Sounds as if this fellow is gonna be much better off with you than he ever would be in the wild foot missing or not.

Good luck with him. Try some earthworms crickets and other types of insects too. Since he is from the wild he may respond to these things very well.

Steve

Thanks for the suggestion. I have worms-a-plenty in the backyard (and we run our yard organic) so I'll give them a shot.

Chicken turtles are the "wanderers" of the Florida aquatic turtle fauna and show up on land more frequently than most. I have encountered several just as a tourist. Yes, they are more carnivorus than the sliders (but maps are very carnivorous - aqautic larvae and molluscs for the females). To introduce Reptomn, present it in shallow water so it is near the tutles filed of vision and, most importantly, pre-wet a few sticks to soften them before you put it in the tank. The texture of the first bite is critical to acceptance. Once it is regulatly accepted, you don't have to bother with pre-wetting it.

That's interesting. I grew up in this area and have *never* seen a chicken turtle. Softshells, snappers, red bellies, cooters, boxies, even gophers - tons. We used to have cooter parades at my parents house as a kid. Whenever the retention pond would dry out they'd all parade over to the lake, and back to the retention pond when the summer rains came back. I was always fascinated. This was what kindled my love of turtles I think.

I'm not disagreeing, just wondering out loud why it took me 30 years to see one. I guess they were just never around the places I was. Funny thing is, I only live about a mile from where I grew up. There is no water nearby though. Like I said in the first post, this guy must of had quite a trek to get here.