Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have 5 baby eastern box turtles that just hatched this week. They are not interested in eating (any worms bugs etc) They are just interested in digging down into the soil that is in the fish tank that I have them in. My guess is that because it is already do late in the year, they just want to hibernate till spring. Unless things change and they start to eat I will hibernate them in my basement for the winter.
Any one who has any advise on hibernating hatchlings I would appreciate your comments.
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Jack

Jack I've never tried hibernating hatchlings, so I can't really offer advice about how to go about doing it ( check out boxturtlesite.org and read the article about artificial hibernation for so good ideas).
I would like to share this, though: I have dozens of hatchlings this year, with some just pipping now. Only a few of the hatchlings have eaten so far, but they all spend their time mostly buried in the peat moss. I think what your seeing is fairly typical hatchling behavior, and isn't necessarily an indication that they are inclined to hibernate. One of our hatchlings from last year started eating 3 or 4 days after hatching: a clutchmate wouldn't eat for a month after hatching. They are all thriving, by the way.
Some hatchlings will take food right away, others won't eat for weeks. That yolk can sustain them for quite a while (longer than we might realize).
Regards
Stephanie

Thanks for the advice Steff. I will keep trying to offer them food every other day and see what happens. But I think that I will also try to hibernate 2 of them in my basement to see what happens. I have a feeling that most box turtles that hatch late in the year like this must hibernate with out eating much if anything at all.
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Jack

You're probably right: presumably what nourishment is provided by the yolk is enough to get them through the colder winter months when they are inactive.

I have two yearlings that over-wintered in the outdoor enclosure: we found them July 7.
Two things were quite evident: they had hatched the previous year, and they had hardly grown at all in the interim.
In fact, this year's hatchlings are the about the same size as the over-wintered yearlings.

That having beeen said, I don't want anyone reading this to think that hatchlings can go months at a time without food when they are housed in a warmer environment.

Good luck with them!
Stephanie

I have an unheated basement. I will keep them there. If I put their container directly on the floor that should keep them plenty cold without having to worry about them freezing.
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Jack

i was actually reading recently that babies should not be hibernated ... i cant remember the site that i read this on.. but most of what ive read about this seems consistant.. most of what ive read says not to hibernate captive boxies until the third year or so...

i just recently aquired a baby eastern and have been reading up on it... hope this helps... also.. my baby isnt eating either.. but i read in the newest reptile magazine that they will usually hide a lot at first and might not eat for up to a month.. they are supposed to be very shy eaters at first .. i got mine to eat some pheonix worms (high calcium worms) after i had turned his lights off, by putting him in front of the dish and then walking out of his view and watching...

check boxturtlesite.org

here is some info from the university of minnesota website..

"Hatchling box turtles should not be allowed to hibernate until after their third year of life. Box turtles can be kept from hibernating by maintaining their winter environmental temperature 10 degrees higher than their summer temperature. Under these conditions, box turtles usually appear sluggish. If they refuse to eat, periodic forced-feedings are recommended. Providing a day length of over 13 hours/ day will help prevent some sluggishness and avoid the need for force feeding."
good luck!
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my pets: clown treefrogs, reed frogs, big eyed treefrogs, tiger leg monkey frogs, gray treefrogs, milk frogs, cuban treefrogs, whites tree frog, green treefrogs, squirrel treefrogs, blue webbed gliding treefrog, chameleon treefrogs?, dusky salamanders, tiger salamander, veiled chameleon, box turtles, mud turtle, map turtle, yellowbelly slider, florida softshell, two saltwater tanks, four cats, two chinchillas, and a boyfriend.

past thinking is that they should not be hibernated because most don't know how to pull this off without killing the animal.

If you are going to consider hibernating your animal I don't see anything wrong with starting right out of the egg. Many turtles do this in the wild but they have much more control over the conditions they need.

I do suggest that people like the original poster try this because they are willing to assume the great risk considering that there is very little info out there on the hibernating of hatchlings.

I do hope that those that try it do post/publish their successes or failures.

>>i was actually reading recently that babies should not be hibernated ... i cant remember the site that i read this on.. but most of what ive read about this seems consistant.. most of what ive read says not to hibernate captive boxies until the third year or so...
>>
>>i just recently aquired a baby eastern and have been reading up on it... hope this helps... also.. my baby isnt eating either.. but i read in the newest reptile magazine that they will usually hide a lot at first and might not eat for up to a month.. they are supposed to be very shy eaters at first .. i got mine to eat some pheonix worms (high calcium worms) after i had turned his lights off, by putting him in front of the dish and then walking out of his view and watching...
>>
>>check boxturtlesite.org
>>
>>here is some info from the university of minnesota website..
>>
>>"Hatchling box turtles should not be allowed to hibernate until after their third year of life. Box turtles can be kept from hibernating by maintaining their winter environmental temperature 10 degrees higher than their summer temperature. Under these conditions, box turtles usually appear sluggish. If they refuse to eat, periodic forced-feedings are recommended. Providing a day length of over 13 hours/ day will help prevent some sluggishness and avoid the need for force feeding."
>> good luck!
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>>my pets: clown treefrogs, reed frogs, big eyed treefrogs, tiger leg monkey frogs, gray treefrogs, milk frogs, cuban treefrogs, whites tree frog, green treefrogs, squirrel treefrogs, blue webbed gliding treefrog, chameleon treefrogs?, dusky salamanders, tiger salamander, veiled chameleon, box turtles, mud turtle, map turtle, yellowbelly slider, florida softshell, two saltwater tanks, four cats, two chinchillas, and a boyfriend.
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Just a tag on. The biggest dangers threatening hibernating hatchling box turtles are freezing and dehydration, one being the trouble outside, the other, the trouble inside.

Hopefully, with indoor hibernation, frost penetration should not be a problem. It would seem that temperatures creeping too high too frequently would present a greater potential to cause failure.

Outdoors, as opposed to freezing, dehydration should prove avoidable since the animal is so close to/in the soil. Indoors, depending on the room, humidity can rise and fall quickly. This is a common problem for box turtles indoors, and young ones in particular. The small ones dry out more quickly.

Good, useful points.

>>Just a tag on. The biggest dangers threatening hibernating hatchling box turtles are freezing and dehydration, one being the trouble outside, the other, the trouble inside.
>>
>>Hopefully, with indoor hibernation, frost penetration should not be a problem. It would seem that temperatures creeping too high too frequently would present a greater potential to cause failure.
>>
>>Outdoors, as opposed to freezing, dehydration should prove avoidable since the animal is so close to/in the soil. Indoors, depending on the room, humidity can rise and fall quickly. This is a common problem for box turtles indoors, and young ones in particular. The small ones dry out more quickly.
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

Hey. Just thought I'd put in my 2 cents. I've been keeping and breeding box turtles for 20 years. DO NOT hibernate baby box turtles. Sure, they do it in the wild. But, in the wild their mortality rate is like 90% just in the first year. There is no reason to hibernate them until you can keep them outside and let them do it themselves (at about 4 inches).
Keep them at about 75 degrees F. They will dig in the substrate and hide about 99% of the time. In the wild, baby box turtles live almost exclusively in that rich layer of soil just under rotting leaves. They may not eat for a few weeks, but keep soaking them in room temp. shallow water every day to every other day. Offer them small earthworms. Branch out to other bugs later. They will usually only eat moving things for up to a year. The biggest risk to a baby box turtle...dehydration...period. The best way to avoid this...sphagnum moss. Buy cheap bags of the stuff in the craft section of Walmart for a couple of bucks. Make sure it's sphagnum, not Spanish moss. Change it every week, and keep it nice and moist. I hope this helps. I'm convinced that baby box turtles are one of the most challenging herps to raise.

I can't help but wonder that the person who is willing to take the risk might actually discover something that could have a dramatic positive effect on the keeping of this species.

I do agree that the risk factor for hibernating is pretty high in my opinion but I'll have to admit that the person willing to try this could have an idea that no one else has considered yet or has a unique slant on those that everyone has.

>>Hey. Just thought I'd put in my 2 cents. I've been keeping and breeding box turtles for 20 years. DO NOT hibernate baby box turtles. Sure, they do it in the wild. But, in the wild their mortality rate is like 90% just in the first year. There is no reason to hibernate them until you can keep them outside and let them do it themselves (at about 4 inches).
>> Keep them at about 75 degrees F. They will dig in the substrate and hide about 99% of the time. In the wild, baby box turtles live almost exclusively in that rich layer of soil just under rotting leaves. They may not eat for a few weeks, but keep soaking them in room temp. shallow water every day to every other day. Offer them small earthworms. Branch out to other bugs later. They will usually only eat moving things for up to a year. The biggest risk to a baby box turtle...dehydration...period. The best way to avoid this...sphagnum moss. Buy cheap bags of the stuff in the craft section of Walmart for a couple of bucks. Make sure it's sphagnum, not Spanish moss. Change it every week, and keep it nice and moist. I hope this helps. I'm convinced that baby box turtles are one of the most challenging herps to raise.
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Ed @ Tortoise Keepers
Trying to keep the fun in Chelonian care

I'm not trying to sound antagonistic. Promise. However, a 90% mortality rate for hatchlings first hibernation would have cleared the world of Terrapene long ago, as they have marched through substantially cooler periods than the present in a form practically unchanged from their present state. At least, that's what fossils want us to believe. I know, fossils have been liars before.

The tradeoff for not risking freezing that first winter (or three or thirty, depending on how skeptical of any security thereof you chose to be) is that you get to struggle to maintain the humidity (as you mentioned) during the time of year when most of us run heaters inside. This is also the time when the choice foods, little worms and slugs and so forth, are not to be found with ease. It is also when the young box turtles natually try to hibernate.

The only time I have seen failure of hatchlings outside is when they lose that bet against the cold. The indoor management prescription you give does not necessarily ensure anything more for the youngsters than a greater degree of temperature control by the keeper, and unfortunately, this is not always of benefit. Everything has it's tradeoffs. I always liked not worrying about delicate babies through that time of year, but that's me (and nature, grin).

I left out an important aspect - outdoor hibernation as in a locale that the species/subspecies/local specimens came from. Take the critters out of their geographic context and hibernate them, and you won't necessarily succeed, hatchling or not.

An interesting point that hasn't come up yet - there are no studies (from hobby specimens or from lab specimens) as to the effect of having no hibernation the first year or two, and the resultant leap that gives the animals' development on a temporal scale.

It is obvious that all turtles mature more quickly when not hibernated. The speed of growth and the results this may have on reproductive development have been contested, but no replicated proof has come as of yet. The reason for this isn't suprising - these animals have such long generation turnovers that it's really hard to do any kind of investigation of this nature. Who will be the first to start early enough to devote, say, seventy years to finding answers?

There have been studies. It was suspected that the phenomena that leads to infertility in adult female Wood turtles was due to skipped hibernation in young. They've actually found it to be more related to improper hibernation duration later in life in males, not their respective females. I've personally had turtles that I've raised that are still producing viable clutches after 15 years. None of them were hibernated during the first year of their life, but they've been allowed to do so naturally outside since.
Also, I live in NC. With our mild winters, it has been shown that many species of reptiles and amphibians here can utilize microclimates (sheltered from wind and receiving a lot of sun...near rocks that hold thermal heat), that don't need to hibernate. No doubt, a baby box turtle would be capable of that. Also, the soil temperature under rotting vegetation where they live normally doesn't dip under 50 degrees farenheit during the coldest part of the winter...combination of higher soil temps from the sun and heat from rotting vegetation (ever seen a steaming pile of wood chips?).
Also, it's 90% mortality from all factors, not just hibernation. It's higher in other turtles. And yes, the first year. Think of it, most female box turtles lay approximately 5 eggs per year. Every 2 years, one survives. The survival rate goes way up after the first year. So, figure a modest reproduction of 30 years for a female box turtles...that's 15 young, more than enough to replace her and her mate, a few extra to increase the population, and even a few more to get crushed by cars. Let's say that it goes to 50% mortality after the first year...that's still 7.5 turtles. Now, I've never seen half of a turtle, but who knows. Most box turtle females probably produce for more like 50 years anyway.

As the discussion was regarding hibernating hatchlings, I was unclear that you meant 90 percent failure rate for hatchlings across the board. Sorry for my confusion.

There has also been supposition (in no way confirmed) that rapid juvenile growth in the species you nominated for example - the wood turtle - has been responsible for misconstruing sexual development to the extent that females only remain reproductively viable for half a decade, and then not optimally so. Again, no confirmation to that, it's just based on human inclining that abnormal growth rates might result in botched development in organisms with a naturally slow progression of life. Perhaps, as in your example, it's more attributable to poor sperm count/viability either from improper hibernation or rapid development. It's funny how when females don't produce, it seems we fault them with primacy.

The population statistics ideal you created has been done before, and more elaborately. What is important to remember is that, although some long-term studies have been carried out on box turtles, none have been all-encompassing enough to display such success/failure rates in hatchlings and yearlings across a population, i.e., beyond individual instances. The only supposed confirmation of few juvenile survivors we have is based off of the observations that box turtle populations tend to be fairly static when not tempered with. We don't see any offspring booms. Unfortunately, we can't really ascribe any numbers to this with solid ground. It's still just theoretical input on our part. This is what is making turtle management across the globe so difficult. There aren't many real numbers. That translates to legal administrators as, there is no proof of damage being done.

I'm pretty sure that it's Michigan State that is doing a lot of Wood turtle research. I read some really cool stuff that they've been doing. Oh to be a fly on those walls...I absolutely love Wood turtles. I'd love it if anyone could find some good references to their work...I haven't had much luck.

You make some interesting points.
Not trying to be argumentative here, but, um, I think your math is a little off.
90% mortality rate would translate to be 9 out of 10.
Also, I think you methodology for calculating how many offspring of a given turtle would reach reproductive adulthood is kindof flawed.
Here's a few things that come to mind.

Many box turtle eggs become food for predators before they even hatch...is that factored in to the overall mortality rate for hatchlings?
What about the mortality rate of juvenile turtles...or is that too factored in to the mortality rate.
Then there's the mortality rate for adults, due to predation and winter kill, not to mention disease. Those are just the more 'natural' causes: when you add human activity (road kill, habitat destruction, etc.) into the mix, that rate jumps higher still.

I think that the survival rate of the offspring of any one turtle is quite a bit lower than the figure you come up with. Just my 2 cents.

Regards
Stephanie

I know it's a simplistic example. You'd make yourself crazy trying to come up with a really accurate account in the time it takes to reply to an internet message board.
5 eggs per year = 10 eggs per 2 years...90% die...1 survives every 2 years.
It's been pretty easy to track them during their first year of life...the little suckers hardly move an inch...it's amazing...I've seen it done. Granted, very small sample size. We got a 90% mortality rate in the first year. This population of box turtles was booming. We calculated that roadkill was going to be the demise of this population, even with such a high neonate mortality. With an animal that lives so long, adults that have few natural predators that can perforate their armor, a much higher female to male ratio, and the ability of females to store sperm for up to a decade, I think that is why they haven't gone extinct.

If I have a clutch from a female that I have rehabbed(road injury) and I know her exact locale, I let her lay her eggs outside. The young are collected from the pen when they emerge the following year, or whenever I find them. Then, they are released at the exact locale...that's nature.

If I have a female that was dropped off and I don't know her locale...the eggs are incubated inside, kept inside the first year, and surrendered to rescue organizations, hopefully never to be released out of their strict area. I want as many of these to survive as possible. I want to saturate the market with these specimens so that people don't have to wild collect or even buy wild caught animals. They can just adopt.
In my many years, I've found very few "outside babies" even though I use fine mesh on the pens. For my "indoor babies", however, I have only had 5 babies die out of hundreds...excluding non-hatches and gross deformities...that's me.

That is a really terrific tactic in many ways.
I just wish more people would look into adopting, instead of buying turtles. Actually, that goes for any animal.
Stephanie

"If I have a clutch from a female that I have rehabbed(road injury) and I know her exact locale, I let her lay her eggs outside. The young are collected from the pen when they emerge the following year, or whenever I find them. Then, they are released at the exact locale...that's nature."

Just would like you to know - Been doing this & raising boxies for a while. You sound just like me. Also had a handful of hatchings die from the many I raised. Been doing it for a little more than 40 years though. But I'm in the N/E area.

Northeast? I used to do it in NJ. Where abouts? I loved my NJ box turtles...until NJ told me that I wasn't allowed to rehab anymore. No good deed goes unpunished. NC is still more laid back about the whole thing. They don't treat you like a criminal for removing viable eggs from road-killed females. I hope you're having better luck where you are. Repeat with me now..."we are not criminals". Not yet, anyway.

Ok, been away - My imput.

If the hatchlings were left in the ground when the cold weather rolls around - fine - let them hibernate.
If your hatchlings hatched early in the year, been roaming around, eating - let them hibernate.
If in your case where they have been out, moving around & not eating - Nope - I wouldn't.
I have found that If they were early hatchlings, ate well & put into hibernation - you will 1 out of 5/ - 20 %
If they were late hatchlings, never out of the ground - they will probably all make it - but there is a chance you can lose them all. I have found a number of nests over the years where not one of the hatchlings made it, even though they were all fully developed and out of the egg. On the other hand, I have found far more hatchlings that survived their first winter if left undisturbed. Personally, hatchlings that I find or hatch during their first year, - I do not hibernate them. I personally do not want to lose ONE. That 20% was too high for me. I use to find a hatchling that didn't make it and second guess my decision NOT to take them in. I have found that 2nd year hatchlings do MUCH better. There are years I don't lose a single one. But then there are years I do find one that didn't survive their first hibernation during their 2nd year of life. But those are few & far. I can accept that loss.
In your specific case - where the hatchlings are out for a month or so and not eating - they already have used up most if not all of their reserves. What are they going to survive on if the reserves are all gone?
However, that is your choice. I'm just giving my imput of 40 years of observations and experiences. But then - you could have more sucess than me. Hope I helped in your decision.